XtC16112000

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16th November 2000

This turned out to be the XtC's first birthday party, and a fine way to celebrate.

KentBeck attended! BruceAnderson led a roundtable discussion. We all reflected for a minute on our most burning question, then the person who had the most burning question asked it. Kent answered briefly, followed by general discussion. When the discussion petered out, someone else asked their question. This went on for several beers/hours. The questions (and answers) were:

• What is it that makes people want to work this way?
• • wanting people to like you as much as possible before you die
  • wanting to tell the truth about your work all the time
  • ...

• Who is responsible? (is there such a thing as collective responsibility?)
• • responsibility and authority should be aligned (is this a balance between ethics and politics??)
  • Example: when a project goes seriously pear-shaped, managers will often transfer the burden of responsibility on to the developers - who do not have commensurate authority.

• Those cards (project management):
• • Sign up
  • • accept responsibility
    • make estimate
  • Early feedback
  • • truth
  • Focus
  • • go as fast as possible
  • Reflection
  • • persistent problems (removing masochism - we discovered)

• How much time should you spend on design?
• • I don't think there was an answer to this one. Which is an answer, I guess.

Tom wrote on a piece of paper that Keith now has these three things that Kent said were characteristic of XP (and that any supposed "new practice" would have to be in accordance with):

• work in/require short cycles
• provide concrete feedback
• be personal

There's also something scribbled down here about eliminating the illusion of certainty, and a note to the effect that the old "double it and move up an order of magnitude" estimating technique is LoadFactor without the feedback. --KeithB

This Thursday was a virtual Tuesday, but yes, there's someone there pretty much every week.

Sally - did you ever get the cards Kent wrote for you back? If not mail me and I'll make sure that Gareth sends them on. Of course she did; they're faithfully rendered in her notes above. -- GarethSB

DuncanMcGregor

DougClinton

GarethSB

• -A quote from the evening:
• • Life is too short for crappy code (Kent Beck, 16/11/00 9:42pm)

JohnClayton

What a particular fine XtC it was. ChrisCottee

This meeting is open to all comers.

Please sign up (not compulsory) if you intend to come.

• KentBeck
• TimM
• TomA
• DavidHarvey
• IvanMoore
• BruceAnderson
• SteveF
• PeterBlackburn
• DaveSykes?
• SallyMoss
• AdamGilmore
• GarethSB
• DuncanMcGregor
• DaveKirby (I signed it earlier, but it seems to have been deleted)
• DougClinton (so did I - we must have clashed)
• JayGoode?
• KeithHodges

Read the article in Computer Weekly on Friday, got the book on Monday and very keen to attend tonight, but don't want to screw up the numbers, will this be okay? -- PeterBlackburn & DaveSykes?

Er, hello. XP virgin here. Do you let newbies in by any chance? (will not be offended if no!) - Sally

Of course we do! Many XP-Virgins have visited us for an evening and left much wiser (no pun intended actually). We can probably show you some paired programming or answer any questions. And if Kent is actually in town, he's sure to create some lively conversation! -- TimM

Nice. I'll be there.

I've just read the Computer Weekly article too... Nice... I'm nowhere near London, but I'll see you in Oxford in April... Cheers, MattStephenson ³host³³date³November 26, 2000³agent³Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 5.0; Windows 98; DigExt)³XtC16112000