Extreme Programing
Just browse my favorite book Thinking in C++. In the preface, it mentioned XP (Extreme Programing) approach.
Probably only someone who has experienced XP and non-XP can tell us what’s the benefits. I am the one of them. I used to work for two companies, which have different opinions according to XP. The first company adopted XP approach. When new feature has documented and begin coding, test cases will be documented as well and prototype is shown for the customers. Any enhancement and improvement will be easily implemented in the circle of three guys. The life circle of development will be short.
The second company didn’t adopt XP approach. Here is an example which will be interesting. Developer lead make a function specification. (I believe he just imagine what the feature looks like and put them to the document). Developer began to coding followed the function spec. After coding done, he/she check in branch build. QA begin to test after build is ready. There are bunch of bugs need to be fixed, some of them are just because QA has different opinion of how the feature works. Argument is obviously. Finally, the new feature can be released. However, the sales engineers, who represent the customers, are not satisfied with some part of new feature. So, again, customer requirement will be sent back. After argument, developers have to make changes for function spec and redo coding. That is the story. Normally, the life circle of development of one feature will be triple time of the first company. The following is a simple chart that you can compare.
Smart company can do the same thing by using few people and few cost. Other company, although very diligent, cannot achieve good result. That’s the benefit of XP.
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