Summary

In this chapter, we examined the beginnings of XP. Because XP was mostly hatched from the C3 project, we set out to describe C3 in detail. We did this using sources that are freely available on the Internet. We supplied as many references as we could, and we invite readers to do their own detective work in addition to this and, of course, to draw their own conclusions. The story that unfolds is quite fascinating to track down and piece together, if only because so much has been said and written about C3, and so much of what has been said and written about it is contradictory.

Later in the book (in various chapters), we suggest what we think could have been done to prevent C3 s failure ( sort of Okay, kids what have we learned here today? ) Of course, to do this we have the luxury of hindsight, but then if we ve got it, we may as well flaunt it, right?

In conclusion, much could have been done to prevent the failure of C3. The remedies we propose, however, would result in a software process that just isn t XP. The lessons learned from this project are more relevant than ever today, because the same XP practices that caused its failure are still being actively promoted and adopted in projects all around the world. A whole new generation of software developers is about to get its fingers burned.