Extreme Programming represents a new wave in software development known as the approach. Tom de Marco, the father of structural analysis, calls Extreme Programming the most important movement in software engineering. The strong points of Extreme Programming in the ICT context are as follows:
– Risk minimization. ICT is developing very fast. To catch up with current developments it is necessary to make investments in new technologies and try new tools out. On the other hand, new tools and technologies are immature and one cannot depend on them. The best approach is to make some (preferably small) investment now and after some time invest more or give up, depending on the developments (it is like buying an option on the stock exchange). Extreme Programming is based on incremental software development and its suites the strategy very well.
– Customer orientation. In Extreme Programming all the business decisions are made by the customer and he has the full control over the development process.
– Lack of excessive paperwork. In Extreme Programming programmers concentrate on programming, not on writing documentation. The only artifacts they have to produce are test cases and code.
– Quality assurance through intensive testing. In XP programmers first create test cases then they write code. Automated tests and integration are performed several times a day and they drive the development process.
– Lack of overtime. Short releases and increments allow to gain experience very fast. This makes planning easier and more dependable. As a result programmer do not have to (always) work overtime.
Extreme Programming has also weak points. The most important are problems with software maintenance.
Since the only artifacts are test cases and code, after some time it can be very difficult to maintain the software. It would be also the problem from the ISO 9001 point of view. In the remaining part of the paper we propose how to solve that problem.
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