Experience Exchange

Results and Soundbites from the Workshop

On May 24, 2001, after the XP2001 conference, a group of 20 people participated in the Experience Exchange workshop. XP folks are used to a highly oral tradition with regards to their sharing knowledge. Here is what remains of our conversations...

Jürgen Ahting: How to build the confidence of clients and to make the customer succeed?

• one on-site customer is not enough
• manager for customer relationship
• customer must stay connected to his organization
• customer wants and needs guidance

Holger Breitling, Martin Lippert: Advises, tricks and best practices

• establishing customer relationship with a kick-off meeting (eg. 3 days in the alps)
• make sure to do continuous integration, not incremental integration
• incremental builds help continuous integration
• will start Wiki page on continuous integration tools
• invest in trust between managers, workers and customers
• invest into tools to improve your process

Graham Cunningham, Dierk König: A physical planning board

• invest in tools to improve the process
• keep the XP values in mind
• it's ok to use/try tools instead of physical objects
• do not limit your options

Willem van den Ende: The Usability Coach

• respect specialized skills and make use of them
• spread the skills/knowledge if useful
• usability coach working with customer and developers
• XP is a trouble indicator
• it's ok to have specialists

Malte Finsterwalder: Problems with Customer Involvement

• update the release plan and make the customers (and management, in this case) understand the consequences
• the customer needs to own the release plan
• more awareness how important the role of the customer actually is
• practices (and rules) for customer involvement needed

Tammo Freese: Do Not Use Ideal Time For Tracking

• distinguish between time and velocity
• track to improve your estimates

Sian Hope: Distance and eXtreme Programming

• tools:
• CVS
• groupware FirstClass
• Bugzilla
• Wiki / website
• mailing list
• CruiseControl (continuous integration, open source from Thoughtworks)
• open source as example of distributed development environment
• observation: some practices worked, some didn't, e.g.
• pair programming
• standup meetings
• identify problems early and compensate
• acceptance testing brings customers and developers together
• online domain does not map one-to-one with face-to-face presence
• learn to identify special advantage of the online domain for practices
• experience with remote environment
• shorter iterations (1 week)
• more frequent communication
• meet in person frequently
• new communications needs
• OTI (a company doing this)
• example in distributed development (non-XP)
• architecture-based teams
• daily integrations, good tools
• face-to-face meetings

Kay Johansen: How do you hire the right XP Customer?

• "proxy" customer for product company
• finding customers in own organization
• real customer (client) contact
• e.g. head of training or customer support
• strong domain knowledge
• management approval of customer (authority granted)
• Joseph Pelrine: supplied customer may not be highest quality ("we can spare this person")
• okay to have both a product manager and a customer
• they share the prioritization
• product manager: organizational
• customer: specification, requirements

Werner Keske: From "Marketing Times" to XP

• "teaching is bringing them into trouble and letting them find a way out of it"
• people before process
• attitude is more important than knowledge
• more coaching/living it than teaching it
• invest in your training skills

Tim Mackinnon: Innovation and Sustainability with Gold Cards

• highly focused, no velocity loss for 2 years, XP practices
• supports continuous learning while keeping focus on value
• observations
• velocity has gone up if people are happy (perhaps not numerically)
• group likes the idea
• personalities that want something new anyway (need more than gold cards)
• move to a new team
• popular gold cards may indicate a new beam
• start with study groups, move to gold cards later
• 2 questions posed, solution does it fit both?
• think about values
• we were ditching continuous learning when gold cards were added
• alternatives
• study groups
• roll into iteration

Rob Mee: XP at Evant

• elevator speech for media
• place to report soundbites (Wiki?)
• telling stories instead of facts
• appeal to business people vs. technical people

Rick Mugridge: A group of programmers are learning XP / Range of skills

• gradual addition of the practices or all start with all practices at a small scale?
• do all at once
• teacher should have done XP actively
• passive coaching: learn about problems
• vs. active coaching: experience success quickly
• set up examples to demonstrate lessons, advantages of the different practices
• physical setup to support XP
• development practices vs. planning
• need for a Wiki page on subject
• XP at school on eGroup

Rachel Reinitz: Challenges of Implementing XP in a Large Company

• danger of people saying they are doing XP but aren't
• bad reputation
• unwillingness to change to real XP
• upfront assessment (checklist) to show if they are doing it
• approached to problems
• shut it down / revert back / reintroduce small
• go to upper management
• relocate, fire or encourage reluctant people to get them out of the XP team
• hiring people that are pro XP
• training is key

Hans Wegener: Surviving in a Hostile Environment

• actively build personal relationships, network within organization
• be proactive in checking external dependencies
• DB, change control, release, infrastructure
• plan ahead and inform as early as possible of your needs
• invite all interested persons to release parties (networking)
• build and maintain relationships even when under pressure
• relate to person, not just the role
• acknowledge mistakes