Agile Class Week 6: XP

"What is XP?" Our professor started the class by asking this question. I was very excited to learn XP because this is the agile methodology that I think I will like the most.

XP or Extreme Programming is a software development methodology designed to improve the quality of software, and its ability to properly adapt to the changing needs of the customer or client. Just like Scrum, XP has five values which are communication, simplicity, feedback, courage, and respect. Since Scrum and XP are both agile methodologies, they have the same concepts of iterative development, working software, release and iteration planning, retrospective, daily meetings, and other elements of an agile process. However, Scrum focuses more on management principles, practices, and processes working together to complete a project, while XP is a dedicated approach to software development.

XP is created to improve software quality and responsiveness to changing customer requirements . To help development team to achieve this, XP has primary practices.

- Test-First Programming - Pair Programming - Ten-Minute Build - Continuous Integration - Weekly Cycle - Quarterly Cycle - Slack - Sit Together - Whole Team - Informative Workspace - Stories - Incremental Design - Energized Work

XP utilizes user stories and frequent small planned releases which helps the development team learn to work with users and allows them to focus more on coding. I will definitely continue studying this type of agile methodology and introduce it to the company I currently work for.

After our discussion, we created prototype cards for our project "Reality Clash" card game. Then, we played the card game to test the decks we created. Lastly, we talked about the impediments to the game. One of them is to remove some of the cards I have added to the hero deck that was assigned to me. Game logic and designing was really a big challenge for me, since I rarely play card games, board games, or computer games. But I have learned that agile is about learning and adapting, so I will continue to gain as much information as possible in order to deliver a quality output.

Source(s):

Learning Agile: Understanding Scrum, XP, Lean, and Kanban