Comment by bwaine
2 years ago
Is Extreme Programming a closed source commercial software development methodology? What makes it so?
I went through a period of my career where I dived head long into it, read Kent Beck's book, liked what I read. Tried pair programming, TDD etc, loved it. Found team that felt the same and had a great couple of years.
Given the book, the many conference talks etc and comparing it to other flavours of agile that went full corporate (Scrum, SAFE). I'm surprised to hear it described as closed source.
My impression of XP at the time was that it was a methodology designed for consulting firms, and that most of its force came from the idea that it was an insurgent effort at reprogramming stodgy waterfall development processes at big companies; all of those companies --- the whole client base of XP consulting firms (which I'm assuming was a big thing) was closed source, because almost everything was at the time.
When working alone remotely from home, I simulate pair programming with a methodology I call "The Stranger". I sit on one of my hands until it becomes numb and tingly, and then it feels like somebody else is typing and moving the mouse!