Organizations considering XP may benefit from the Company's experience by considering these points.
XP will provide a superior development methodology. It will not replace the need for market research, a strategic plan, and sound business decision making, nor will it mitigate the effects of poor business practice.
Training for all affected staff, from executives on down, is vital.
Get buy-in from key participants, including the development team, before implementation. If you fail to do this, be prepared to pay a price that will undermine XP's performance in your workplace. Consider hiring a change management consultant to assist.
Make the necessary physical changes to the workplace to foster two key tenets of XP: pair programming and constant customer-developer communication.
Keep the customer in charge of what is developed and when.
To demonstrate quickly the benefits of XP, implement it first on a new project with no legacy code.
If implementing XP on software that has legacy code, be prepared to take extra time to write unit tests and to refactor that code.
Reward people for their efforts.
Create documentation that meets your corporate needs. Beware, however, of slipping back into the "old ways" of wanting all functionality defined before anything is developed.
Collect data and share it.
XP is not only for developers. It is essential that customers at all levels understand it and embrace it.
