Article:  |
An Introduction to Extreme Programming | |
| Subject: | XP in a classroom | |
| Date: | 2001-05-10 10:32:51 | |
| From: | slimick | |
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I used XP in the Software Engineering course this spring. Well, I tried. I did have very positive results. Of my four groups ALL had functioning, useful code at the end (something I've never had before). The things that worked best: - Defining stories; - Picking stories for V1.0 (I had a drop dead date of March 1 -- there was no grumbling about too soon or an unfair target.) - Having acceptance tests available a week before both deadlines (V1 - 3/1; V2 - 4/17) - In the group where all the students were at the same level of ability, pair programming worked well. - By having simple stories, people could use simple designs. Things that didn't go right: - The other groups consisting of an obvious master programmer plus novices did not use pair programming. Apparently the novices were overwhelmed by the master. - I didn't do enough on having the groups write unit tests before they started programming. Things would have worked better if I had done so. - Apart from one group there seemed to be little sense of ownership. - Had the semester been longer, there would have more refactoring -- some had already started. One factor in looking at our results is that this is not a residential 4 year school -- one group had a residential CS major, another residential CS major who was on the women's basketball team, and a third who lived 50 miles away and depended on others for transportation, since he has a medical disability that does not allow him to drive.
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