Exploring the use of a .safe subset. of extreme programming: An industrial case study

A year-long case study was performed with a team at IBM to assess the effects of adopting practices of the Extreme Programming (XP) methodology. The case study was structured using the Extreme Programming Evaluation Framework. Through two software releases, this team transitioned and stabilized its use of a subset of XP practices. The use of a “safe subset” of the XP practices was necessitated by corporate culture, project characteristics, and team makeup. The team improved productivity and achieved a four-fold improvement in the post-release quality of new code when compared to similar metrics from an earlier release. Our findings suggest that it is possible to adopt a partial implementation of XP practices and yield a successful project. Exploring the Use of a “Safe Subset” of Extreme Programming: An Industrial Case Study Laurie Williams, Lucas Layman, William Krebs, Annie I. Antón North Carolina State University, Department of Computer Science {lawilli3, lmlayma2, aianton}@ncsu.edu IBM Corporation, krebsw@us.ibm.com Abstract A year-long case study was performed with a team at IBM to assess the effects of adopting practices of the Extreme Programming (XP) methodology. The case study was structured using the Extreme Programming Evaluation Framework. Through two software releases, this team transitioned and stabilized its use of a subset of XP practices. The use of a “safe subset” of the XP practices was necessitated by corporate culture, project characteristics, and team makeup. The team improved productivity and achieved a four-fold improvement in the post-release quality of new code when compared to similar metrics from an earlier release. Our findings suggest that it is possible to adopt a partial implementation of XP practices and yield a successful project.

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