Christopher Smith wrote:
First, the leaders are all a bunch of *FAILURES*.
Sorry, that's just wrong. The leaders of XP (Kent Beck, Ward
Cunningham, Ron Jeffries and perhaps you want to throw in Martin
Fowler) were all very successful even prior to the genesis of XP.
Okay, back that statement up with some facts, please. IIRC, Beck was
the only one who accomplished anything useful before XP.
The CCC project that spawned all these Smalltalk weenies who
advocate XP got shitcanned. Somehow people don't seem to notice
this. I don't want advice from someone who failed at what they are
giving advice on, thanks.
A project getting canceled doesn't necessarily mean those involved in
it or their methodologies were failures.
Yes, actually, it does. Failed projects are the result of bad
decisions. Given that they led the project, they failed.
A process that does not work because of "political considerations" still
*does not work*.
I'm not suggesting that they should be branded pariahs and never heard
from again. However, the project they led with their own processes
failed. A failed project does not confer authority (actually, a
successful one only confers very *limited* authority, but that's a
debate for another day).
In addition, according to "XP Considered Harmful" not only was the first
XP project canceled but also the second one was also canceled:
http://www.avoca-vsm.com/Dateien-Download/ExtremeProgramming.pdf
Projects get canceled for a lot of reasons, sometimes due to failure
by the development team, but sometimes independent of the success or
failure of the team. In the CCC project's case, the purchase of
Chrystler by Daimler-Benz played a significant role in the project's
demise, not to mention the fact that the project was a fixed-price
contract job that was already behind schedule and over budget (think
of the success rate of projects once they are in that state) before
Beck showed up and started introducing XP practices.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chrysler_Comprehensive_Compensation_System
The XP bunch had *4 years* to get a *payroll* program working before the
Daimler-Chrysler thing. This is something that companies had been doing
for years in COBOL. This isn't rocket science. It is straightforward,
linear decision code.
It was a payroll program. The inputs were specified. The outputs were
specified. They had previously working programs to compare
against--*and they still couldn't deliver*.
Because, you know, taking a working program and extending it to cover
the new cases is *boring*. Refactoring the old code to make it better
is *boring*. Writing test cases for the old program so that when you
actually make modifications you know that you didn't break anything is
*boring*. Better to rewrite everything from scratch with a "Shiny, new
language and process! Yay!"
XP is based on well established principles in the software business.
Not, it's not. There is *zero* data to support most of the assertions
that the XP bunch make. And, when you try to inject data, you are met
with "Well, you aren't *really* doing XP unless you are doing everything
together."
Arguing with XP advocates is like arguing with intelligent design
advocates. They don't get that there is this little thing called
"evidence" that some of us demand.
-a
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