The problem I see with most objections to XP is that they are often speculations on theory than wisdom based on actual practice. It’s amazing to see the amount of time and energy people spend in *discussing* process than actually building something and learning from experience.

It takes a lot of time to get experienced. How many software
development projects
can you experience in a life-time? How many can you experience with three
years of work experience?
Of course nothing is better than experience. This is why I try to change things
around me in a way that I can learn from them. Heck, this is why I am trying
to introduce XP in my company.
On the other hand there is a lot of value in theory. You can understand many
things before trying them out. There will be things that you don’t understand,
but it’s still better to learn from discussion with experienced people than to
try to make all the experience (== errors) by yourself.
And I find that just believing what other people tell you without questioning
is different from “getting it”. For me discussion is a very valuable resource.
And sometimes you can learn from people who are not as experienced in
a topic as you are, too, because they may ask questions you don’t ask any
more.

The rest you wrote gets a +1 from me ;-)

XP is a process that has *evolved* through the collective experience of programmers through the mess that the software industry had become- always late, always over-budget, always buggy.

In the midst of all the chaos, there were programmers working after hours doing that they weren’t allowed to do during the day, automating builds and writing tests for code (TDD), fixing things they were not supposed to fix (refactoring), working with their like-minded colleagues on weekends to ensure they got a lot done without the “inevitable bugs” avoiding the wrath of management (pair-programming), … and so on.

XP and Agile brought us all out of the closets. That’s why only experienced people with open-minds can adopt XP. Or fresh out of college students who have not yet been corrupted by the “you’re too good to write tests- you’ll only do coding” crap from management.

Questioning XP without learning XP is like questioning the Gang-of-four Design Patterns without having any serious programming background. Design patterns *evolved* after years of doing things the wrong way to learn the right way. Design patterns teach you how to write good code by learning from the mistakes made by smart, experienced programmers before you and the lessons they learned.

*** Design Pattens are Best-practices for programming, solving most typical programming problems.

*** XP/Agile are Best-practices for product/project development process, solving most of the typical process problems (requirements gathering, estimating and scheduling work, measuring progress, managing change, getting feedback earl and often (not just a signature on a prototype), continuous knowledge transfer and peer-review, (eliminating “job-security hacks”) …

It’s obvious to *anyone* who has enough years of experience behind them. The challenge then they face in accepting XP/Agile is their own conflict-of-interest.
You see, XP and Agile are brutal if you want to loaf off. There’s no place to hide in XP- everything is exposed. There’s no “job security” because you anyone in your team can replace you if you’re not pulling your weight. Or if you’re a contractor, you now risk being caught for overbilling if you don’t have “velocity” commensurate with the hours you’re billing.

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