TY - JOUR AU - Pierce, Duncan AB - BRIEFING by Duncan Pierce EXTREME PROGRAMMING (XP) is a lightweight software development process which enables small teams to work closely with customers to deliver high quality systems to regular milestones. XP is well established in the USA and is doing well in Europe and especially in the UK, where it is making the transition from early adopters ­ typically small companies ­ to big business. After leading the adoption of object-oriented technologies a decade ago, the financial sector is driving XP take-up, with some teams already well established and a number of pilot projects beginning. The problem with traditional development is that too many projects fail to deliver usable oversimplification. As ever, it is easier to add complexity than to remove it. Quality is promoted through aggressive automated testing. It is customary in XP to write automated tests for every new feature before implementing it. Ensuring the test fails before the feature is implemented even helps to validate the test itself. Test writing is also used to drive the design by using the test as a kind of mini-use case for the code. Another major technique for promoting quality is refactoring: improving the design and structure of existing TI - Extreme Programming JF - ITNow (formerly The Computer Bulletin) DO - 10.1093/combul/44.3.28 DA - 2002-05-01 UR - https://www.deepdyve.com/lp/oxford-university-press/extreme-programming-SoCW0MraCT SP - 28 EP - 28 VL - 44 IS - 3 DP - DeepDyve ER -