I came across this book in the Bibliography section of Scott Berkun's "The art of Project Management".



First, the structure. Well, this book is under 200 pages. So when Beck talks about keeping what is essential, he is surely applying it while writing books.



Second, the content. The book takes the reader from understanding business risks associated with software development, to understanding the changing economics of software development & why XP can fit the demands of an ever changing business scenario. The book then establishes what XP is, what are its features, what are the activities, who are the X players & then links the roles, activities, & features together across each phase in a typical XP project. While Beck is persuasive about the usefulness of XP, he has also included a chapter at the end of the book which talks about projects where using XP may not be advisable. And yes, such a project is an outsourced development project.



XP presents many interesting features. Traveling light - or code & tests together being all you need - sounds like a dream; nano-releases - or doing a daily or hourly build so that at any time you have a full system working, no matter the completeness of desired functionality - , building a system story by story, & going back & revisiting scope ever so often are all features that can be immensely valuable to the business & to the project team.



As a result of all this, & more such practices, XP resembles to an extent Darwinian evolution in some ways. Trying many things & keeping what works, designing for today's needs & changing that with tomorrow's requirements tomorrow but not today can be seen as interesting commonalities between Darwinian evolution & XP!



Overall, I think the book is great introduction to XP. I'd have liked case studies as well to understand how well good theory fits general projects of any kind, but this book does not cite too many such projects. Nevertheless, pick it up if you want to understand what the XP evolution is all about.



S!

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