XP, like many of its waterfall breathen makes it easy to follow. It caters to those people in the Shu phase of learning. It’s easy to follow and it’s easy to get wrong without guidance. It provides a set of values and principles as well as a set of practices to help you achieve them. It’s probably less useful for people in the Ha or the Ri phases of learning.
I don’t want to criticise XP since there’s plenty of material already out there about for that. Rather, I want people to understand where it fits in. I thank the XP community for showing us how practices help to bridge the gap between principles and values as well as showing us that simply focusing on practices (or one approach) proves limiting. I also want to emphasise that XP’s practices aren’t the only way of doing this. The fact that XP works for beginners is both its strength and weakness.
As an agile coach, I often use different sets of practices to help bridge people into the other phases that brings more awareness and thought into everday processes. After all, part of respecting people is understanding each of their specific needs.
