Transforming yourself, your team, or your organization to using an agile development methodology like Extreme Programming isn't easy. While some practices may simply fall into place, others can be difficult to implement due to technical, political, organizational, or personal obstacles.
Some XP practitioners have triumphed over these challenges, some are in the process of overcoming them, and others have failed on some levels and succeeded on others.
This workshop is a place where we can safely share our experiences of both success and failure in order to learn and grow. The workshop is a follow-up on last year's successful Experience Exchange. Please have a look at its workshop results to find out what problems and solutions were explored last year.
The main goal of this workshop is to share experiences with each other about doing XP and to learn from each other.
In order to achieve this goal, we will be working corporately and in small groups to examine and document typical problem/solution pairs. Possible choices for a final workshop report are a pattern collection, experience reports, or stories.
We seek submissions primarily from XP practitioners who want to share the challenges they faced when applying XP. Depending on the number of submissions, also interested XP beginners are welcome detailing their hopes and fears about XP.
Applicants are required to submit a position statement that should be no longer than one page and should describe at least one problem or problem/solution pair that the author plans to contribute to the discussion. All submissions should be in HTML and must include name, affiliation, address, phone/fax number, and email address.
Selection will be based on clarity, originality, technical and educational merit, and, most of all, the potential relevance to other XP practitioners - the "synergy effect". The organizers will look for ideas that can be utilized by others at the workshop.
Position papers must be submitted to Frank Westphal <mailto:westphal@acm.org> via email no later than May 6, 2002. Potential participants will be notified of acceptance no later than May 13, 2002. The workshop will be limited to 20 persons.
A few position papers are available.
Instead of presenting the papers, each participant will be expected to review everyone else's paper before the workshop and complete the following two sentences for each:
We will be spending the morning and early afternoon on questions and answers about the papers. In the late afternoon, we will be playing the XP card game, Showdown.
Showdown is a fast-paced game in which players compete to win the most number of cards by comparing Extreme Programming Solutions. The game moves quickly as players throw down cards to determine which player holds the most important Solution. When two or more players hold equally important solutions, another showdown occurs, until one player wins the showdown. Play continues until one player holds every Solution card. Showdown is entertaining, engaging and educational for individuals with or without Extreme Programming experience.
The workshop will be held during the XP2002 conference. The format is intentionally lightly structured to leave enough space for the group to find consensus on site. Therefore, the following format is just a suggestion and subject to change:
Jutta Eckstein is an independent trainer and consultant from Munich, Germany. Her interest in agile processes is based on ten years experience in developing object-oriented applications. Having completed a course of teacher training and led many 'train the trainer' programs in industry, she focuses also on techniques which help teach OT. She participated in and organized several workshops, panels and tutorials at OOPSLA, OT and EuroPLoP. Besides XP 2002 she is also a member of the program committee of XP Universe 2002, EuroPLoP 2002, OT2002 and OOPSLA 2002.
Joshua Kerievsky is a software development coach and programmer. After programming on Wall Street for nearly 10 years, in 1995 he founded Industrial Logic, a company that specializes in Extreme Programming and Software Patterns. When he's not writing code or helping companies with their software development process, Joshua designs and teaches intensive workshops that transform the way programmers and software teams do their work.
Frank Westphal is an independent trainer and consultant based in Hamburg, Germany. He has been involved in the refinement of the XP practices since 1998. Currently, he is helping organizations transition to using agile software development techniques.