Chapter 1. Why the Web Industry Needs XP

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We are all in the gutter , but some of us are looking at the stars.

”Oscar Wilde

Web development is an adolescent, unique in its requirements and unparalleled in its potential. Like most adolescents it wants to be accepted as an adult as it tries to pull away from its parents. If it is going to reach its full potential, it must take a few lessons from the more seasoned world of software development.

In the bad old days, the Web industry was experiencing growing pains in its progress toward maturity. Technologies were changing under our feet, and we still hadn't developed best practices for completing projects. It seemed as though too many customers were paying for the industry to learn how to do things right. Not surprisingly, there were a lot of unhappy customers, and it is always the unhappy ones who seem to talk. As a result Web development was developing a bad reputation. What were we doing wrong? Quite a few things, it appears:

• We tried to be all things to all customers with insufficient expertise.

• We often failed to deliver on time or on budget.

• We tended to develop adversarial customer relationships.

• Our projects didn't always meet customer expectations.

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