[Sussex] XP stuff [was]Gentoo problems.

[Geoff Teale]

On Wed, 2004-02-25 at 10:06 +0000, Steve Dobson wrote:
<snippage>
> I wouldn't argue that it should.  But how much of XP can you tailor
> before it stops being XP?  Remove peer programming, short release 
> cycles and make the design documentation a requirement and you have
> something that looks more like JSP than XP.

Agreed, peer programming is a big thing and short release cycles (and
continuous integration and testing) are the very core of XP.  However,
requiring design documentation to be maintained in order to facilitate
co-operation between teams is commonplace - we do it here.  XP certainly
states that working code is more important that perfect documentation -
but it also recognises that effective communication   between developers
is important and that nothing is finished until it passes the users
acceptance test (which may include documentation).  The key thing is
that it doesn't try and tackle this on the scale of the whole
application - it breaks it down into manageable chunks.

Nothing in XP is an original idea - everything is a solution used
elsewhere.  XP in itself is merely a "buzzword" to give an air of
validity to these techniques and generally I feel those techniques are
mostly valid.
-- 
Geoff Teale
Cmed Technology <gteale at cmedltd.com>
Free Software Foundation <tealeg at members.fsf.org>