Thursday, June 10, 2004
Bad night's sleep (serves me right), document production and Xtreme Programming
Guess what? I dozed off and the next thing was I woke up and it was dark, very dark. Needless to say, I did not sleep well for the rest of the night, and woke up this morning with a stiff neck as well. Serves me right!
Got to work today and sorted out the little back-log of things to finish from yesterday.
I needed to check if any of the registered minor issues had been addressed incidentally
by the other activity I was aware of. Well, it was a nice idea, and definitely worth the effort of looking, but no luck. None of the open "issues" (not that I would count any of them as being that big) have been touched by what I have been doing. The best news there is I think I've spotted one which can be closed for another reason. Even I get lucky sometimes.
While in the kitchen getting a mug of coffee, I started talking with one of my colleagues (JS, from Australia) about "Xtreme" programming. In case it isn't obvious, my current project is anything but "XP". At times I have joked about it being the "glacier" subset of "Waterfall". It turns out that JS also has experience of the approach and, like me, he sees a whole lot of good in what they do. The question we were discussing was: Is XP applicable to all situations, or if not, when and where should it be applied. I wouldn't claim to be an expert on XP. My "programming" experience is rather stale,
and my inclination is toward solving a "Business" problem (with or without) programming.
As a result neither JS nor I expressed any really strong opinions, and we certainly didn't reach a conclusion. On the one hand, I have seen some good things from XP (and from DSDM), but on the other I will admit to distrusting the "hit the ground coding" attitude. One thing that did find interesting was that JS thought that a vital prerequisite for XP to work was that the "Customer" bought in to it.
I think that is quite a perceptive observation.
Now, back to the grindstone!
