Extreme Programming Installed Ch. 19-21

Extreme programming installed
Chapters 19-21
Ron Jefferies, Ann Andreson, Chet Hendrickson
Editors: ?

Summary:
The main topic covered in this reading is the ability for a team to be able to react to unforeseen complications in a project, such as delays or design issues. This concept, also known as steering, allows the team to adapt their project to make up for poor scheduling and design decisions. The authors discuss how many scheduling issues can be alleviated by obtaining more precise estimations of the cost of user stories. Although, this skill can typically only be improved through experience, the authors recommended assigning someone to track the progress on user stories for the current iteration. This person, also known as a tracker, should determine if there is a problem with the development of a user story, and if so they should notify the team of the problem. This allows the team to provide input and support or even assign the user story to another pair of programmers that are more suited for the job.

The authors also cover the idea of release level steering, or making adjustments to the project based on the release date of the project. In release level steering, scheduling is an important aspect because it allows you to place more important or riskier stories closer to the beginning of the schedule in order to minimize risk and to have a better working product sooner rather than later.

Discussion:
This reading is important because it talks about the actions that a manager or programming team can take after a schedule has been made. It shows how a schedule should not be set in stone and should be adapted and changed based on the current. On the other hand, this reading also did not present many new ideas on scheduling. Many of the ideas seemed like common sense, such as planning your schedule around the release date of your software. I would assume that such a practice would be common in industry. This reading can be extended to any project that experiences unforeseen problems, which would include the majority of software engineering projects.