Review By: Michael Yudanin
06/07/2004“Extreme Programming Explored” provides the user with the principles of Extreme Programming (XP), and explores the implementation of these principles. It provides insights into the recommended team practices and describes a day in the life of a customer, a programmer, and a manager. The book even addresses the office layout – a pretty important thing in XP. The book has plenty of examples, including whole pages of – understandable! – Java code.

The author leads the reader by the hand into the realms of Refactoring and Pair Programming; wonders together with the reader while beholding the might of the System Metaphor; writes the Stories and plays the Iteration game.

Refactoring is something that sounds very interesting, but in practice, when taken as XP prescribes, it may turn your code into a pile of spaghetti that will be very hard to handle.

Pair Programming may be an intriguing idea, but in practice it rarely works. The main reason is that people are different. For some, programming in pairs will work, for others it will not. The book describes very clearly and honestly possible problems with Pair Programming, but does not provide viable means to solve them.

A System Metaphor is a very short story – preferably one sentence – that explains the essence of the software system by example. In my experience, the metaphor is an excellent communication tool. It can put all stakeholders on the same page. Without it, it can be extremely hard to communicate the system’s purpose to the newcomers.

XP wipes out much of the traditional software engineering process. For example, Business Analysts are not in favor of direct communication with the customer. Now, try to imagine this communication when the customer’s language differs from the programmer’s in almost every dimension, and they have no translator.

The same holds for the requirements, which XP gathers through “stories.” Should the software process be programmer defined and programmer centered? To get a hint, consider a car design and manufacturing process that is not customer centered but rather automotive engineer centered…

If you want to understand how XP works, this book is for you. The author’s style is easy to read and the book is very well structured. Every chapter is followed by a list of references. The contents deliver the principles and the ideas, while the style – short paragraphs, numerous code examples, clear language – provides you with the soul of this approach. However, if you are looking for a software process that will bring more order and predictability to your software development shop – I would suggest you look elsewhere.