Back in my days at BoldTech Systems (now Perficient), we did hard-core XP. I mean hard core. We all had tables on wheels, no cubicles, no walls - the whole team in a "bullpen". We strictly followed all of the XP practices, and if we didn't, the VP of Engineering who was the uber-XP-Coach, would quickly swoop in and set you back on the straight an narrow path.
Some valuable lessons we learned:
- Pair programming for 100% of production code isn't optimal. Many programming tasks are just too routine to justify it. For those, do frequent (at least daily) code reviews. Save pair programming for the tough stuff.
- 100% pair programming can be exhaustively intense. How many people in this world do you really want to sit shoulder-to-shoulder with for 8 hours a day? Or 4 different people for 2 hours per day? Most developers I know need some time to work alone to keep their sanity.
- Continuous integration requires an enormous amount of discipline. If you have to stop everything whenever a single test breaks, and you're writing lots of tests, you better not have very many tests fail.
- Don't forget to do design. XP doesn't emphasize design, but it doesn't preclude it, either. Do just the right amount of architechture and design - at the beginning of a release and each iteration.
- Test driven development is good. Period. Go ahead an turn the dial to 11 on this one!
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