 The most obvious way to start
extreme programming (XP) is with a new project. Start out collecting user stories
and conducting spike solutions for things that seem risky. Spend only a few weeks
doing this. Then schedule a release planning meeting. Invite customers, developers, and managers to create a schedule
that everyone agrees on. Begin your iterative development with an iteration
planning meeting. Now you're started.
Usually projects come looking
for a new methodology like XP only after the project is in trouble. In this case the best way to start XP is to
take a good long look at your current software methodology and figure out what is slowing you down. Add XP to this
problem first.
For example, if you find that
25% of the way through your development process your requirements specification becomes completely |
useless, then get together with your customers and write user stories instead.
If you are having a chronic
problem with changing requirements causing you to frequently recreate your schedule, then try a simpler and easier
release planning meeting every few iterations. (You will need user stories first though.) Try an iterative
style of development and the just in time style of planning of programming
tasks.
If your biggest problem is
the number of bugs in production, then try automated functional tests. Use
this test suite for regression and validation testing.
If your biggest problem is
integration bugs then try automated unit tests. Require all unit tests to pass
(100%) before any new code is released into the code repository.
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