Which one of these is not an XP practice? Refactoring, Continuous integration, On-site customer, Planning too far in advance, etc. are all XP practices that aren’t used very frequently. The most important practice, however, is learning and evolving.
Refactoring
Refactoring is a valuable technique in Agile software development. It is crucial in XP because it makes it easy to change code. When code is difficult to change, it becomes difficult to plan and use the practices of XP. This practice is used to help reduce the technical debt of the code and make it easier to reuse.
Refactoring is an important practice because it improves code quality. Refactoring is crucial for the longevity of an application. It involves incremental improvements in design and code, without modifying behaviour. A system cannot survive if refactoring isn’t done on a regular basis.
In XP, programmers design the functionality of tasks with functional tests based on the requirements in a user story or task card. These tests are written before the eventual code is written. They’re meant to be a catalyst for the programmer to think about what they’ve created and why it works. XP emphasizes the need to design a system that works as it should and to avoid having to change it a few times.
Planning too far into the future
Planning too far into the future reduces the accuracy and reliability of a plan. Instead of creating detailed plans for large projects, Agile teams instead prioritize lower-priority tasks and stories. This way, they account for the inherent variability in estimates. Another common practice is the Ten-Minute Build, which automatically builds a system and runs tests within ten minutes. The founders of XP recommended this time frame because longer builds introduce more time between errors.
Testing first
XP is a software development methodology. It emphasizes the use of a small set of practices to build software. The goal is to achieve excellence in these practices, and a large part of the name XP comes from the emphasis on continuous improvement. For example, XP practitioners often discuss the reuse and sharing of code, which eliminates integration problems. They also use automated testing to detect errors before deployment.
XP practitioners believe that good testing and short development cycles lead to better quality software. They use a test-driven development process, which requires automated unit tests to be written before code is written. Every piece of code must pass these tests before it can be released. This gives the team immediate feedback and helps them produce reliable software.
Another XP practice is called “Test-First Programming.” In this method, a team of programmers sits at one machine and writes tests for each piece of code before integrating it into the live system. This allows for more frequent integration, which makes it easier to spot problems before they get into production.
On-site customer
In the XP process, the on-site customer sits with the team, so that they can communicate freely. In addition, the XP practices emphasize the importance of delivering working software. This is why the XP approach introduces downtime in its iterations, which serves as a buffer against any potential issues. The team can use this time to work on paying down technical debt and doing research.
If you have a large, distributed team, you may not be able to pair program much. In such cases, you’ll need to choose developers who are conscientious and committed to applying the XP practices with discipline. In addition, the team should sit close to the customer to give developers the attention they need. This will help ensure the development process runs smoothly. In this way, your team will be able to understand what the customer wants without having to interrupt them.
