The Art of Agile Development

Is XP Right for Us?

You can adopt XP in many different conditions, although the practices you use will vary depending on your situation. The practices in this book were chosen to give you the greatest chance of success. That leads to some prerequisites and recommendations about your team’s environment. You don’t have meet these criteria exactly, but it’s worth trying to change your environment so that you do. This will give you the best chance of succeeding.

As Martin Fowler said:^[9]

In this sense I see a startling parallel between DHH [David Heinemeier Hansson, creator of Ruby on Rails] and Kent Beck. For either of them, if you present them with a constrained world, they’ll look at constraints we take for granted, consider them to be unessential, and create a world without them. I don’t have that quality, I tend to try to work within the constraints gradually pushing at them, while they just stick some intellectual dynamite under them and move on. That’s why they can create things like Extreme Programming and Rails which really give the industry a jolt.

In other words, if your organization puts a barrier between your work and success, don’t just put up with it—find a way to remove it. It’s your best path to success.

Similarly, if you want to practice XP, do everything you can to meet the following prerequisites and recommendations. This is a lot more effective than working around limitations.

Prerequisite #1: Management Support

It’s very difficult to use XP in the face of opposition ...