Improving Your eXtreme Programming Knowledge

After visiting the fantastic ‘XP Day’ in London and then giving some feedback to a recent interview candidate, I was thinking back on how I have improved my eXtreme Programming (XP) knowledge until now. As it is one thing important to WDS I thought others might find these thoughts interesting

I should mention that XP has been adopted here since the original release of the ‘White Book’ (Extreme Programming Explained: Embrace Change by Kent Beck). This is great as it means we have a mature adoption here and I can continue my learning with some of the best practitioners in the industry. I feel it was one of the benefits to Xerox of purchasing WDS and we are already seeing our best practices becoming ever-present in their world class research hubs

I think the first and easiest ways someone can improve their Agile and XP knowledge and skills is to meet with developers practicing XP. ‘Agile South Coast’ meetings may be the easiest manner locally although I believe it is less XP focused. Other local development conferences are also a good opportunity, for example re:develop (http://redevelop.io) which incidentally was sponsored, part organised and spoken at by people from WDS.

I’d also like to note that internally we have been discussing potentially creating an XP focus group in the area (similar to eXtreme Tuesday Club in London), so do let us know your thoughts and keep an eye on dev.wds.co if you are interested in future.

I personally was also part of a mini network with some like minded developers who met regularly to discuss our adoption (or attempted adoption) of the latest agile processes.

This highlighted that much of peoples early agile experiences come from:

• Attempting to adopt XP practices in their existing role and
  
• Attempting to convince management to adopt them.
  

My personal experience (driven by initial recruitment discussions with WDS) was to change my development manner and then try to convince the rest of my team, followed by my entire (globally based) department. This wasn’t entirely successful but I learnt a lot and could relay my experiences, learnings and ‘retrospect’ on what had gone well or badly (and why)

It’s also worth thinking outside the box and potentially applying this (and therefore gain experiences) outside of your day to day role. For example, outside of my personal projects, I did some voluntary work with a professional football club and a football league organisation in order to evaluate and practice the use of different methodologies, processes, technologies and communication techniques

Finally, following industry pioneers on social media leads to awareness of many interesting articles and discussions, @unclebobmartin is my favourite

Again, I hope this helps. Feel free to comment, share and discuss

Chris Watkins