Extreme Programming Explored [Paperback]

Extreme Programming (XP) is a phenomenon. It promises developers unprecedented efficiency and quality -- and it's delivering on that promise. In this book, Bill Wake doesn't just explain XP to developers who are new to it: he shows how to personally apply the XP best practices that have been identified by leading-edge practitioners. This new book emerged from a series of Bill Wake's essays intended to help XP newbies understand and personally apply XP. Wake covers each key tenet of XP development, including the central role of developers, programming in pairs, direct communication with customers, and continual testing. The book's pragmatic, hands-on approach is reinforced with supporting Java code, concrete examples, and extensive war stories. Along the way, Wake addresses major objections to adopting XP, and introduces new XP "best practices" that allow organizations to introduce XP far more rapidly and successfully. For every developer, software engineer, architect, project manager, or software customer already using XP or considering the introduction of XP methods.

You know what XP is, how to get it up and running, and how to plan projects using it. Now it's time to expand your use of Extreme Programming and learn the best practices of this popular discipline.

In Extreme Programming Explored, you can read about best practices as learned from the concrete experience of successful XP developers. Author and programmer Bill Wake provides answers to practical questions about XP implementation. Using hands-on examples--including code samples written in the Java programming language--this book demonstrates the day-to-day mechanics of working on an XP team and shows well-defined methods for carrying out a successful XP project.

The book is divided into three parts:

• Part 1, Programming--programming incrementally, test-first, and refactoring.
• Part 2, Team Practices--code ownership, integration, overtime, and pair programming; how XP approaches system architecture; and how a system metaphor shapes a common vision, a shared vocabulary, and the architecture.
• Part 3, Processes--how to write stories to plan a release; how to plan iterations; and the activities in a typical day for the customer, the programmer, and the manager of an XP project.

To demonstrate how an XP team uses frequent testing, you'll learn how to develop the core of a library search system by unit testing in small increments. To show how to make code ready for major design changes, the author teaches you how to refactor a Java program that generates a Web page. To see how a system metaphor influences the shape of a system, you'll learn about the effects of different metaphors on customer service and word processing applications. To show how customers and programmers participate in release planning, the book demonstrates writing and estimating stories, and shows how the customer plans a release.