XpLegoOT2001

2 Teams; joint Connextra and DrKW. This was a trial in preparation for OT2001 (see http://www.ot2001.org ) starting April 1.

This page is for anonymous feedback from the trial. Please add your comments at the bottom of this page. Some sample questions are given below.'

The objectives were: To build a robot, get a feel for XP practices, to have some fun. Did you think the workshop met these objectives? Were the session leaders (customers - Paul, Tim and Oli) knowledgable enough? Was the workshop too long/short? Suggestions for improvement?

May be it got a bit chaotic. At a certain stage there were no more improvements. So perhaps a mooving target would be better. Like story 2 - start from the inside. Also more realistic.

May be the XP-practices should be more enforced/focused. Not by the cstomers. But by the environment. E.g.: Software- and hardware-teams should be locally separated. Not only did I gain some knowledge and experience in extreme programming techniques, but I also had a really fun time.

An excellent learning experience - though over far too soon. Perhaps a little extra time to build some stable XP practices out of the chaos.

An alternative to using more time would be to StopBrieflyHalfwayThroughLegoWorkshop and refocus on what we are trying to achieve with XP and maybe answer some questions. I found the initial chaos didnt shape up as much as I would have liked during the time because we were always rushing into our next iteration. There was still a lot to be learned through reflection after the event, though. Overall, a good experience, and great fun. - DuncanPierce

When there are a lot of teams, I like the idea of a joker team that does big design up front. Our experience (accidental since it took a while to find a laptop) matched traditional projects much more closely.

Met all the objectives: Great fun!

It might be a good idea to stress the need for version control a little more - we almost lost our program completely. It might also be a good idea to suggest teams load "old" software into the replica of the latest robot before changing hardware or software (ie fully duplicate the hardware and software before allowing the next iteration of change to start)

There was a (short) debate in our team on purpose of the estimating - one believed it was time-boxing (ie we would stop after that time and deliver what we had), another believed it was about getting better at estimating (ie the frequent feedback would allow us to produce better estimates). It would help if the intention was made clear. Good points, well made -- OliBye ³host³³date³April 10, 2001³XpLegoOT200 ³³agent³Mozilla/4.76 en? (Windows NT 5.0; U)³XpLegoOT2001