Yeah, and Communism isn't really a bad thing--it's just that nobody's implemented it correctly yet, right?
There were plenty of controls in place during the course of the project. The biggest XP problem in this project was that XP requires the customer to be technically proficient in order to successfully manage the project. But the whole point of hiring a consulting firm to build a website is to avoid having to have any technical proficiency at all.
Additionally, the project managers at The Company Who Will Not Be Named were sold a bill of goods about XP and told to make it work.
XP does not work. Like all sweeping generalizations, that statement is, of course, subject to the statistically outlying occasions when the planets align and miraculously something wonderful happens. But I have yet to hear of one major success story using XP besides the C3 project at Chrysler--a company with virtually infinite resources and infinite time to do whatever IT projects they want.
In the real world, XP is as much a red herring as Communism. Good thing it doesn't kill as many people.
"...does anyone have experience in a workplace even close to this?"
Yep, I sure do.
My company was a client of a large, ex-international dot.com consulting company that espoused the use of XP. As my company's technical person, I got placed into an XP team.
Lemme tell ya, it was wonderful! These guys ran the project. The project managers stayed out of the programmers' ways, the systems analysts didn't interfere... it was great.
Of course, the product didn't ship, what was done was the worst kind of garbage, it didn't follow the specs that were carefully laid out by the project managers and systems analysts, and they spent nine months on the bloody mess, with a team of (ultimately) 18. (Since then, myself and three others built the entire project in 8 weeks flat. And it actually works!)
It is now the most dire of insults in my dev group to be called an Extreme Programmer, because we've seen what this so-called methodoloy really does:
It fosters an undisciplined environment where the inmates run the asylum.
It results in evolved code, which any and every experienced software engineer will tell you is bad, bad, bad.
It takes much longer than necessary, since the project is evolving constantly.
The eschewing of documentation means whomever has to inherit the bloody mess is going to be completely lost.
What code is actually usable is barely of prototype quality.
At the Sun Technology Days here in Seattle a couple of weeks ago, an honest-to-god fist-fight broke out over XP. I can only assume that one of the fellows loved the undisciplined environment wherein no stinkin' non-techie MANAGER was going to tell HIM what to do; the other fellow has probably lived through it.
XP is worse than "flavor du jour": it gives a bad name to everyone else in the industry that actually gives a damn about shipping quality software.
This has happened to me twice, and it never really gets easier.
But here's what to do: talk to your coworkers, explain the score, and then don't be surprised when they say "go for it!", "that's great!".
Chances are, they just need a little incentive to go make their lives better, too. The mistake I keep making in this situation is not giving my coworkers enough credit.
Go ahead and talk to them straight up. I bet you'll be surprised.:-)
Hola, I loved "Accidental Empires"--to the point of doing a tour of Silicon Valley and hitting all the high points mentioned in the book, as well as making it required reading in a software engineering class I taught.
But what else have you written?! Your bio in the book mentions the fact that you've written other books, and I'd love to read 'em.
(And incidentally, if I mail you a copy of "Empires", would you autograph it for me?:-)
Microcomputers were not big business until the MS/IBM-PC thing came around (though one might arguably call Apple Big Business with the sheer amount of money they were raking in during the early 80's).
However, minicomputers and mainframes were huge business before the 80's. Timeshare systems cost a bloody arm and a leg, especially when you add in all the consulting services, and huge empires were built around them.
Computers were around a long time before the PC. And the Business was Big.
(And incidentally, let's all take time to learn the appropriate use of apostrophes, okay? We're supposed to be the smart ones. Possessive indefinite pronoun is its, not it's.)
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There were plenty of controls in place during the course of the project. The biggest XP problem in this project was that XP requires the customer to be technically proficient in order to successfully manage the project. But the whole point of hiring a consulting firm to build a website is to avoid having to have any technical proficiency at all.
Additionally, the project managers at The Company Who Will Not Be Named were sold a bill of goods about XP and told to make it work.
XP does not work. Like all sweeping generalizations, that statement is, of course, subject to the statistically outlying occasions when the planets align and miraculously something wonderful happens. But I have yet to hear of one major success story using XP besides the C3 project at Chrysler--a company with virtually infinite resources and infinite time to do whatever IT projects they want.
In the real world, XP is as much a red herring as Communism. Good thing it doesn't kill as many people.
"...does anyone have experience in a workplace even close to this?"
Yep, I sure do.
My company was a client of a large, ex-international dot.com consulting company that espoused the use of XP. As my company's technical person, I got placed into an XP team.
Lemme tell ya, it was wonderful! These guys ran the project. The project managers stayed out of the programmers' ways, the systems analysts didn't interfere... it was great.
Of course, the product didn't ship, what was done was the worst kind of garbage, it didn't follow the specs that were carefully laid out by the project managers and systems analysts, and they spent nine months on the bloody mess, with a team of (ultimately) 18. (Since then, myself and three others built the entire project in 8 weeks flat. And it actually works!)
It is now the most dire of insults in my dev group to be called an Extreme Programmer, because we've seen what this so-called methodoloy really does:
- It fosters an undisciplined environment where the inmates run the asylum.
- It results in evolved code, which any and every experienced software engineer will tell you is bad, bad, bad.
- It takes much longer than necessary, since the project is evolving constantly.
- The eschewing of documentation means whomever has to inherit the bloody mess is going to be completely lost.
- What code is actually usable is barely of prototype quality.
At the Sun Technology Days here in Seattle a couple of weeks ago, an honest-to-god fist-fight broke out over XP. I can only assume that one of the fellows loved the undisciplined environment wherein no stinkin' non-techie MANAGER was going to tell HIM what to do; the other fellow has probably lived through it.XP is worse than "flavor du jour": it gives a bad name to everyone else in the industry that actually gives a damn about shipping quality software.
Respectfully submitted,
But here's what to do: talk to your coworkers, explain the score, and then don't be surprised when they say "go for it!", "that's great!".
Chances are, they just need a little incentive to go make their lives better, too. The mistake I keep making in this situation is not giving my coworkers enough credit.
Go ahead and talk to them straight up. I bet you'll be surprised. :-)
But what else have you written?! Your bio in the book mentions the fact that you've written other books, and I'd love to read 'em.
(And incidentally, if I mail you a copy of "Empires", would you autograph it for me? :-)
Keep up the good pundit-ing!
I suppose IBM wasn't Big Business then, huh?
Microcomputers were not big business until the MS/IBM-PC thing came around (though one might arguably call Apple Big Business with the sheer amount of money they were raking in during the early 80's).
However, minicomputers and mainframes were huge business before the 80's. Timeshare systems cost a bloody arm and a leg, especially when you add in all the consulting services, and huge empires were built around them.
Computers were around a long time before the PC. And the Business was Big.
(And incidentally, let's all take time to learn the appropriate use of apostrophes, okay? We're supposed to be the smart ones. Possessive indefinite pronoun is its, not it's.)
L. Ron Hubbard would have loved it.
(Ain't it nice to make an old guy happy?)