Five XP Practices for Agile Development

David Bernstein says that the core of Extreme Programming (XP) is comprised of five development practices: automating the build for continuously integrating software as it is written, collaborating with team members through pair programming, practicing agile design skills that enable testability, using test-first development to drive design, and refactoring code to reduce technical debt. Together, these five technical practices are essential for sustained success with XP and for many of the best agile teams. However, quite a few agile teams haven’t been exposed to some or all of these practices. David explores these XP practices, discusses how to use them to reduce risk, and explains how to build quality in at every level of the development process. He makes the business case for these technical practices by showing how they address the inherent risks and challenges in building software. David then looks at how practices from XP address the core issues of software development by helping us “build the right thing” and “build the thing right.”