Extreme Programming Installed Ch 7-9

Extreme Programming Installed

Ron Jeffries, Ann Anderson, and Chet Hendrickson 

Summary

Small Releases – Chapter 7 talks about releasing workable software little by little, instead of just as a whole at the end. It is very common in projects to change directions. Because of this, releasing early and often could make this change process more dynamic and natural. By doing this, you are also providing the customer with an actual tool that they can evaluate and give you feedback on. However, sometimes it is hard to determine how to this. In order to illustrate this the chapter ends by giving several examples on how we could design small releases in specific and concrete projects.

Customer Defines Releases – Chapter 8 discusses how the customer is involved in the process and how he/she defines the meat of the releases. At first, the customer will write stories and make sure that what he/she wants has business value. Then, the customer will hand those stories to the programmers, who will ask questions and estimate how much time and effort each story will take. Finally, the chapter discusses the release planning meeting, which as the name implies, is to plan the smooth execution of the project, to estimate how much time (in points) will each story take, and how many points per interaction will the team be able to achieve.

Iteration planning meeting outcome

Iteration planning – Chapter 9 is all about planning short iterations with clear objectives. In order for the customer to prepare for the interaction planning meeting he/she should choose the most important stories which points sum to the total of maximum points that the team can manage per week (determined in the release planning meeting). Then, the customer will explain the stories and the programmers will brainstorm engineering tasks, and divide and estimate the work. Finally, the chapter explains a specific planning method for assigning and estimating stories. 

Discussion  

Until now, this book has been incredibly easy and interesting to read. The chapters are concise but at the same time convey a lot of information and are easy to follow. The process described in these three chapters seems very straightforward and useful. However, in my previous experiences with projects I have found small releases hard to implement, as I am usually focus on a specific final outcome. On the other hand, as the book illustrated, most projects can actually be divided into small releases and it truly seems to have a positive effect in the project and team as a whole. I look forward to applying this methodology to my project.