Distributed Extreme Programming

Distributed Extreme Programming

Abstract

Extreme Programming (XP) is a relatively young software engineering process. While still in its 'teething' stage, XP has attracted much attention due to its radical approach to software development. This approach is rooted in a simple philosophy and supported by a fixed set of values and practices. Despite reports of the successful use of XP in industry and academia, one pervasive criticism remains. That is, XP lacks scalability. This is derived, primarily, from the co-location requirement for stakeholders.

Distributed Extreme Programming (DXP) is a solution to an XP problem. The de facto definition of DXP states that DXP is XP with certain relaxation on the close proximity requirement of stakeholders. We propose to overcome this constraint by providing CSCW support for stakeholders arbitrarily dispersed in place and time while using the XP process. Though this may seem the sensible solution, implementation of it poses some interesting questions and highlights many crosscutting factors with potential to impact this solution.

In this seminar, we present a discussion on XP, DXP, related research opportunities, and on our proposed approach that is being investigated as an alternative DXP solution.