Problems That Motivated Changing to Extreme Programming

These sorts of projects are not without their problems, but we do not want clients coming back with complaints about software quality and inappropriate functionality, and we cannot afford to spend all our time on maintenance. Consequently, we must ensure that we deliver extremely high quality solutions. The Genesys company can do some maintenance, particularly where the client wants some new functionality, but we have to focus hard on software quality and, in particular, thorough testing of the product. The students are steeped in conventional software engineering methodologies by the time they reach the fourth year, but these have not been able to guarantee the level of quality we need, and in many cases these methods get in the way.

This year we decided to introduce the fourth-year class to Extreme Programming. None of them had heard of it before, but the response was overwhelmingly positive, and they decided to apply the ideas, as far as they could, to all their projects.