Agile Project Ideas from Extreme Programming

Extreme Programming (XP) is an agile software development approach invented by Kent Beck in the late 90’s. It has many ideas for managing projects that could be useful in other industries.

Sit Together
Teams work better if they sit together in a shared space. This aids communication on a project.

Whole Team
Include in the team all the skills and perspectives needed for the project, whether that be people building the products, the business or end users. This gives a sense of belonging to a group. The whole team might be dynamic, changing as the needs of the project progress.

Keep the Teams Small
Twelve is a good team size; anymore and it’s hard to interact with everyone on a typical day. For large projects, consider fracturing problems up into units so that a team of teams can solve them.

Informative Workspaces
An interested observer should be able to walk into the workspace and understand what is going on in the project very quickly. Use Charts to show progress. Use pictures and models to show what you are going to build.

Energized Work
Keep the working hours sensible. Woking and creating is best done with a relaxed, rested mind. If you’re sick, take time out to get better. Declare times where mobile phones and email clients are switched off to allow focus.

Pair Working
When working on a computer to create something, whether it is software, a design or a document try using one machine between two people for periods of time. Whilst working, move the keyboard and the mouse back and forth. This helps to keep each other on task, clarify ideas, and brainstorm best approaches.

Use “Stories” to Understand What Your Clients Want
Arrange a workshop with the end users of the product or service you are building. For each thing they want the end product to do, get them to write a one sentence “story” on a post-it. For example “ I would like to be able to log in with my username and password and see my recent account activity” Put the post-its up on the wall and start arranging them in order of priority, so you can plan the production order.

What do you think? Have you every used an “Extreme” approach? Did it work or not?