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I had the pleasure of hosting Kent Beck, one of the key people who shaped Software Engineering as we know it. Kent is the creator of Extreme Programming (XP) and one of the 17 original signatories of the Agile Manifesto. He introduced Test-Driven Development, Software Design Patterns, and created JUnite.
Embarked on a personal mission to help geeks feel safe in the world, Kent continuously introduces concepts that aim to empower high performance while instilling a sense of safety in engineers.
In this episode, we discuss:
XP and how it evolved organically from an intuitive approach for rapid delivery to a methodology that instantly made sense for teams.
The main principles of XP along with practical approaches for implementing it within modern engineering teams.
Importance of communication as a foundation for XP.
Cost of software and how balancing the software design and feature development can improve the team’s performance and ability to deliver new features quickly.
Kent emphasizes the social nature of software engineering and the importance of daily communication to deliver the most value. As he puts it, being a technical virtuoso is not enough to succeed. There’s much more to it; there’s the context of the code that you need to write.
“I could be bad enough as an engineer to make sure that projects failed, but I couldn't be good enough as an engineer to make sure that projects succeeded.” - Kent Beck
XP relies on engineering excellence, but it equally emphasizes the role of communication and collaboration. Many engineers testify that their peak performance has been in teams that do XP, yet not enough practice it regularly. So, apart from the theory, we focus on the much-needed practical guidance for teams looking to replace their current software development practices with XP.
Talking about team performance, Kent adds the importance of balance between code design and feature work. There’s this tug of war between business people and engineers. The former pulling toward shiny new features. The latter toward spotlessly clean code. Striking the right balance could empower teams to release new features at a fraction of the time.
“There's some code, it's kind of messy, I have to change it. Should I tidy first? Here's this feature, do I do a little bit of design before I work on it? That's the question. And the answer is probably yes, but not too much. Don't get carried away.” - Kent Beck
Listen now on Apple and Spotify.
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Increasing Team Velocity While Improving Quality: A Talk with Kent Beck