Extreme Programming Explained: 2nd edition

Recently I noticed that Kent Beck had released the 2nd edition of one of my favourite IT books (along with PEAA). I wasn't sure how much of it was new or if the changes would be worthy of the purchase. My good friend, and agile guru, Steve Hayes is excited about the new content and after reading the excerpt he has on his blog (all of which is new material) about Taylorism, I can see why.

I especially love this sentence:

Putting QA as a separate department within the engineering organisation also sends the message that engineering and quality are separate, parallel activities.

[Added]
So in my rush to get out the door to a meeting, I made three mistakes in the first version of this post. I just realised this now as I re-read it.

(1) I didn't add a disclaimer saying that the content of this site is my own personal opinions and does not represent my team's or my employer's view in anyway. I hadn't used a disclaimer yet, but I will from now on.
(2) I didn't point out that this sentence is talking about mechanical engineers (not software engineers), and that it talks about having QA as a totally separate DEPARTMENT... as opposed to having a separate TEAM or GROUP of people for QA, which is something that many software development teams do.
(3) I didn't say WHY I love that sentence so much!

I love that sentence because it is a rather blunt reminder that we need to keep development and testing activities very close together. I like to remind myself often that the feedback between these two activities needs to be prompt, and frequent. Something, I might add, that all the successful software development teams I have known do very well... my current team included :)

 

The content on this site is my own personal opinions and does not represent my employer's view in anyway.