xml-dev - Re: Extreme Programming goes mainstream?

[Tim Bray <tbray@textuality.com>]

Just another data point; XP contains some ideas that seem
truly great, but I'm not convinced that you need to buy into
the whole package.  Like most people, we haven't bought into
pair programming - pair debugging, sure.  The really great 
idea is that of always doing a small number of the next-most-
important features first, with necessary refactoring as
you go, and repeating this loop until you declare victory.

Why this wins: you would have had to do the refactoring 
anyhow; and this way, you do it with a good code-based
understanding of how your key features have to work.

Maybe, 20 years after I got into this profession, we can
finally leave behind the notion that the business people 
will write a complete spec for what they need, and the 
programmers go implement that.  It's never worked outside
of a few specialized domains, and never will.

Also the XP "story card" product management process is
very good.  

As I've been saying in public, I think the people in the
standards-building process could learn some valuable 
lessons from XP. -Tim