I have been reading the Extreme Programming guided tour by Don Wells. There are some good "take-home" quotes in there, and I want to use this space for quotes I like. I will update this post as I continue reading.
Extreme Programming
"Extreme Programming is successful because it stresses customer satisfaction."
"Extreme Programming emphasizes teamwork."
"Extreme Programming improves a software project in five essential ways; communication, simplicity, feedback, respect, and courage."
Agile Development
"Agile processes are a re-evaluation of the way software is created. The quality of the source code is much more important than you may think."
"The most important thing to know about Agile methods or processes is that there is no such thing. There are only Agile teams. The processes we describe as Agile are environments for a team to learn how to be Agile."
"making the
customer... a valuable and essential team member... True domain expertise and experience is essential to finding a simple, elegant, correct solution"
"Left alone programmers must assume they know everything they need. When asking questions is difficult or slow the knowledge gap grows."
Manage Goals, Not Activities
"Instead of managing our activities and waiting till the project ends for software, we will manage our requirements and demonstrate each new version to the customer."
"Surprise! Software Rots!"
Iterate
"A strong heartbeat (iteration) produces working software."
Team
"Don't bottle neck decisions with a single authority. Change from one person controlling everything to empowering the entire team."
"An Agile team sets rules to become free."
Communication
"When you keep the meeting short, you won't have a problem getting the team to participate."
"Developers are responsible for asking the right questions until a clear picture of the problem and a good solution is found interactively. Make a customer part of your project team."
Summary
Extreme programming guide can be read here. There is a useful site map that should help navigating the site.
