TobinHarris

More at http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?TobinHarris

I've just read Martin Fowlers excellent book 'Refactoring', and he's completely sold me the idea of writing Unit Tests and attempting Test First Programming. My thirst for more knowledge bought me into XP territory, and then finally here! I must say the whoe idea of XP doesn't quite feel right to me... yet. Did anyone esle have that feeling when first becoming aquainted with it?

One possible reason for this is that I completed a degree in Software Engineering about a year ago, and I came out wanting to gain as much control over the software process as possible. My initial learnings (although I'm probably wrong!) tell me that XP seems to advocate relaxing control in some areas - such as detailed analysis and design, but then emphasise control in others such as actively defining project interations up-front. I suppose I'm reluctant to accept the idea of relaxing formality since I see many software projects going pear-shaped due to lack of process and planning - so I end up taking a the more the better point of view. The more I think about it though, heavy processes that require great overheads in documentation and precedure must be extremely costly and difficult to implement. Is this where XP comes in - a light-weight process that places emphasis on the most risky areas of the project?

I suppose another reason I'm a little reluctant to accept XP is because I've been learning to put Use Cases at the center of my development practices over the last year, and now if I convert to XP and user stories I'll have to leave all that behind 8-( Is this the case?

This should not be too great a departure. The diagrams are little more that a visual key to the descriptions. Use cases are like acceptance tests and so like XP stories, the main difference is granularity. If you are interested see my paper contrasting Use Cases and Stories there's a link on on my wiki page, RachelDavies

Just out of interest, does anyone know of any companies in the North who use XP? In fact, does anyone know of any companies in the North who use any methodology!?

Email me at [email protected]