Summary

In this chapter, we provided a lightning-fast tour of the XP methodology. We also briefly discussed the problems that XP is attempting to solve and gave some indication of the way that these problems would be solved in a non-XP project.

As you probably noticed, there is some crossover between the two. This is because most of the XP practices aren t new. What sets XP apart is that it is the first methodology to have put all these practices in one place and wrap them up into one lightweight (anorexic, even!) process. (As we discuss later, XP presents a curious paradox: It s lightweight in the sense that it contains a small number of easy-to-remember practices, but it s heavyweight because adhering to its practices involves lots of unrelenting effort and discipline from the entire team for the whole project.)

We spend much of this book analyzing these practices and examining them in the context of real-world projects. Toward the end of the book (as you saw from the sneak preview in the preceding section), we discuss ways in which you can refactor XP as a process without causing your whole project to topple over.