Going Agile from RUP

Nov 22, 2009

I was a Developer, Lead, Architect for last 10 years and all my career i was concentrating mostly on how to design, architect, code and complete the given project. My teams never cared for writing Test Cases even JUnit Tests. I tried to write some JUnit Tests for my last 2-3 projects for 2 yrs but i was distracted quickly from keeping them up to date (I know this is shame on me). I was realized that even though I am becoming experienced day by day i was not becoming a good programmer. Recently i have decided to leave my current job and to go in to an Agile Team (eXtreme Programming). This post will talk about my first week experience in this Agile team.

Environment

This was 360 degree change from what and how i was working for my whole career. Here are the some of the things my new team are following:

My team consists of Developers (different levels I to IV), Lead, Project Manager, QA Team, Customer (Total around 18-20 people) all sitting at one place around 2 big rectangular tables (20 ft x 6ft)
On these rectangular tables we have 6 desktop computers with 2 monitors, 2 key boards
One side we have notice board kind of tables with cloth on it with white and other color papers defining User Stories placed on cloth. They have sections for New Stories, In Development, Ready for QA and QA Complete.
Stand-up meetings every day for 15 minutes (It doesn’t take more than 15 minutes for 20 people). There is a small base ball which will be thrown in zig-zag order and who ever gets it gives his status like what he/she did yesterday and what he/she will do today. If they are stuck with some task they will ask whole team to help him/her if they have any previous experience on it. At the end you will have opportunity to announce anything.
Always work in pairs that is why we have 2 monitors and 2 key boards (I paired with 3 people in my first week)
None of us have any standard place where we sit every day (obviously no desk), no phone and we use our laptop just to check outlook for the office email and yahoo chat and sometime use social networking sites
Strictly follow TDD (Test Driven Development)
Few team members follow Ping-Pong style development i.e. one person will write a first test case and other person picks up his keyboard and writes production code to make the test pass and also write the next test case and first person writes production code and write next test case. I kind of love this style.

My Feelings

So far I love it and excited to take a task all by myself and pick a pair and execute it from end to end.
Still curious to see why some of my friends hate this methodology
I am keeping a close eye on XP methodology for last 4 yrs and I always knew this will rock and will become defacto in development. I already see lot of companies adapting to it (except big-3 i guess).
Practicing XP by yourself alone is not easy as I have tried it myself for last 1 yr or so and you need every one around you to talk, eat and breathe XP.