Rapid Development for Web-Based Applications

As software organizations continue to move toward Web-based systems development, they often assign or outsource such projects to small teams of highly qualified, but often relatively young, developers. Frequently, the developers’ attitude is less than positive toward software engineering practices—particularly software process improvement initiatives and metrics collection. Part of the problem is the business context: Web-based applications demand faster time-tomarket and the continual integration of new requirements. Such demands have increased the popularity of agile software processes, which let teams increase development productivity while maintaining software quality and flexibility. Agile processes like extreme programming (XP),1-3 Scrum,4 Crystal,5 and adaptive software development6 aim to increase a software organization’s responsiveness while decreasing development overhead. They focus on delivering executable code and see people as the strongest ingredient of software development. Here, we offer an overview of the philosophy and practice behind XP, which is currently the most popular agile methodology.