Summary

As we discovered in this chapter, as long as change is managed and not actively embraced like a long-lost lover, and as long as your development process doesn t increase the likelihood of requirements changing late in the project, then change can be used to good effect. The competitive advantage that can come from last minute changes should not be ignored. However, it is also important to understand that change is not free. Simply rewriting something (however efficiently ) can only add to the time that was taken to write the first version.

Therefore, accepting change and managing it appropriately is rather different-from the XP approach of embracing change and encouraging scope creep. As the project grows larger (either in team size or functionality), it becomes even more important to manage change, as we explore in the next chapter.