Extreme Programming Applied: Playing to Win

This is the most practical book among all the XP books ever published. You do only need to read Kent Beck's XP manifesto "Extreme Programming Explaining" before studying this book. Then you may skip all other books from the "Extreme Programming Series" and start to interpret written material about individual XP practices:- Design Improvement: " Refactoring: Improving the Design of Existing Code " by Martin Fowler;- Test-Driven Development: "Test Driven Development: By Example " by Kent Beck;- Sustainable Pace: "Slack: Getting Past Burnout, Busywork, and the Myth of Total Efficiency" by Tom DeMarco;- Pair Programming: "Pair Programming Illuminated" by Laurie Williams and Robert Kessler;- Whole Team: "Agile Software Development" by Alistair Cockburn;- Planning Game: "Planning Extreme Programming" by Kent Beck, Martin Fowler;- Small Releases: "Software Project Survival Guide" by Steve C McConnell.This book covers most of the XP practices at a glance, but with sufficient level of details. It tells in practice: - How to introduce XP, how to overcome managers' and developers' resistance, how to set the right attitude (Part One);- How to remember XP core values, how to handle exceptions if something has broken, e.g. the customer won't write stories or the number of developers is odd, how to do pair programming or stand-up meetings, how to steer and how to plan the whole project and the individual iterations, how to write tests, to create the pair-friendly space, how to refactor, and how to reduce the risk (Part Two);- How do design the simple, what collective ownership means, how to automate acceptance tests and not get distracted by the code, why the overtime is not the answer and how to coach and keep the score (Part Three);-How to "sell XP" (commercial aspects of XP projects, e.g. how to bill the customer), how to "scale XP", and how to "measure XP" (Part Four).Enough said, this is the most practical book among all the XP books ever published.

As a complete newcomer to XP I bought this book based on the review by Peter Lindberg (see below) and I agree with his comments.Some parts of the book assume that you know a little about XP at the start and you have to wait for a fuller description further on in the text to gain understanding. I didn't find this too much of an issue but you may want to buy one other introductory XP book to help.I enjoyed the authors writing style and liked the use of guest experts in reinforcing the methodology.Well worth the cost as you only need to buy this book and perhaps one other to get the XP story.

This is the first in-depth book on Extreme Programming (XP). If you are at home with the concepts of XP, but have lots of questions that you feel the XP literature doesn't answer -- this is the book for you! I myself have been into XP for little over two years, and I can't think of any questions I've had, that aren't addressed thoroughly by this bookThe book is focused on introducing XP, dealing with things like how to tackle resistance from developers and managers; which XP practices should be implemented first; what factors are important in order to successfully implement XP, and so on. The authors list six of the XP practices as "the bare essentials". Not that the other practices are unimportant, but they can wait until the first six are in place. The six are: Planning Game, Small Releases, Testing (unit testing only; acceptance testing can be addressed later), Pair Programming, Refactoring and Continuous Integration. These six practices are very thoroughly described, dealing with the how and why a practice works, how to start doing it, and so on. As for the remaining practices, they also explain why each practice can wait until the first six are in place.I tried to read this book with a critical mindset, so I kept notes of things I thought they failed to address properly -- only to find that they returned to them later in the book, forcing me to cross out items on my list. What was left on my list were only minor details, except one item: I would have liked them to deal with the System Metaphor as exhaustively as the rest of the practices.Just as "XP Explained" by Kent Beck and "XP Installed" by Ron Jeffries, et al, this book basically says that, well, it is good if you can come up with a metaphor, but if you can't, that's not too big a deal. In these books, the topic of the metaphor and how it relates to the concept of architecture, is given only a few pages (2.5 pages in XP Applied). This is a pity, because I feel that it is an important issue. (I suggest reading "XP Explored" by William Wake, which has two very good chapters on this.)If you only intend to buy one book about XP, I would recommend this book over "Extreme Programming Explained: Embrace Change" by Kent Beck (which is the XP manifesto). This is not to say that "XP Explained" is a bad book, though -- I nominate that book to be one of the most important software development books, ever. But if your aim is to learn as much about XP as possible, this book is in a league of its own.If you can afford more than one book, I would suggest starting with either "Extreme Programming Installed" by Ron Jeffries, Ann Anderson and Chet Hendrickson, or "Extreme Programming Explored" by William C. Wake. I think that one of these books is a good start, since they both are very practically oriented. After reading one of them, I think it's a good time to read "XP Explained", which very elegantly describes the philosophy behind XP. Finish off with "XP Applied" to get answers to all your questions. I

This is the best XP book to date if you are interested in learning how a successful XP project is run. The book is packed with practical insights that reveal the real life difficulties and successes that an XP project will experience. Also provides excellent advice on how to go about introducing XP in stages in your organization.

I like this book. If you're going to do XP, then you have to read Kent Beck's "XP Explained" first. But then you'll be left with questions. Ron Jeffries' "XP Installed" and this book, "XP Applied" are the two to reach for next. Both are concrete and practical. What I like about this book is that it contains a good amount of concrete and emotional content - "we did this, we saw/felt that, we responded so..." It captures how you might be feeling as you work the practices. It also illustrates how XP embodies the ideas of modern Agile Software Development.I think this book will be a good companion to someone rolling along the ups and downs of applying this new methodology. I can't think of how they could have done this better.