CoreValues

UserPreferences

Communication: Problems with projects can invariably be traced back to somebody not talking to somebody else about something important. XP aims to keep the right communications flowing by employing many practices that can't be done without communicating: ThePlanningGame, PairProgramming, CollectiveOwnership, ContinuousIntegration, OnSiteCustomer.

Simplicity: Choose, build, design, implement the simplest thing that could possibly work. XP is making a bet. It is betting that it is better to do a simple thing today and pay a little more tomorrow to change it if it needs it, than to do a more complicated thing today that may never be used anyway.

Feedback: Concrete feedback about the current state of the system is absolutely priceless. Optimism is an occupational hazard of programming. Feedback is the treatment. Unit tests, estimates, task completion, story completion, functional tests, velocity, demos, iterations, and prioritization all play a roll in giving feedback.

Courage: If you aren't going at absolutely your top speed, somebody else will be, and they will eat your lunch. Numerous XP practices support the courage to refactor the code and even throw code away. Ron Jeffries calls this aggressiveness or fearlessness.

See also http://xprogramming.com/Practices/PracValues.html.

* All text above taken (some verbatum, some paraphrased) from Beck "XP Explained".

-- AndrewFuqua - 02 Jan 2002 <br />