Advantages and Disadvantages of Extreme Programming

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May 27, 2024

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The advantages of Extreme Programming (XP) are as follows:

• Robustness
• Resilience
• Cost Savings
• Lesser Risks
• Employee Satisfaction
  
  

1. Robustness:

The main advantage of XP is its simplicity. The XP design is similar to a jigsaw puzzle where developers work on many small pieces or iterations. Combining the iterations at the end gives the final product. Regular testing at the development stage ensures the detection of all errors. The approach creates working software faster with minimal defects. In this manner, the coding blocks were created by the team. Pass through validation tests that are customer-approved and therefore, once completed are exactly what the customer requires.

One advantage of this approach is that cost estimates are based on software features instead of per activity. This allows customers to make decisions about what has to be included.

Depending on the budget. By prioritizing important requirements first, the customer obtains maximum value with the least amount spent. This results in a trade-off between the marginal increase in product utility and the cost to incorporate additional features. This approach also allows both the customer and the user to terminate the development at any point and still have valuable and functional code, even if incomplete.

2. Resilience:

Requirements in software projects keep changing either because of the emergence of new business opportunities or simply because of the partial data made available in the initial requirement-gathering phase. Changed requirements readily are adopted by XP, through a collection of user stories before beginning each iteration and by obtaining feedback throughout iterations.

3. Cost Savings:

XP cuts short unproductive activities to reduce costs. It allows developers to focus on coding instead of spending time on unnecessary paperwork and meetings. It also takes away the requirement for separate testers.

The cost of making changes increases as software advances in its life cycle. Traditional programming methods make changes at the end of the life cycle, whereas XP allows changes at the development stage.

4. Lesser Risks:

XP reduces the risks related to programming dramatically. Traditional programming methods depend a lot on critical members of the team. A task is split into modules and each team is made responsible for their module. By distributing risk, the dependency on any one architect, individual coder, or project manager is significantly reduced.

5. Employee Satisfaction:

The methodology of XP, with its value-driven approach, encourages fixed work times with little scope for overtime. This helps increase employee satisfaction and retention. The breakdown of the project into subcomponents prevents the accumulation of work to be completed before a tight deadline.

The disadvantages of Extreme Programming (XP) are as follows:

• XP is a difficult process to apply in a practical scenario. As it takes discipline to follow this approach, it is difficult to convince developers to adopt this methodology and practice it. Customers also may not like the idea of too much involvement in the project. Management may have trouble getting used to the practice as it changes dynamically during the project life cycle.
  
  
• XP is code-centric and not design-centric development. The lack of a design concept in XP may not affect small programs much, but can be problematic when programs are large or when there are too many people associated with the project.
  
  
• Quality planning helps adequately trained teams produce high-quality products. XP does not measure or plan the quality aspect of development.
  
  
• Software projects today are large and complex by nature and are hard to design using the incremental methods that XP practices.
  
  
• XP emphasizes refactoring during the software development process. Too much refactoring can be a waste of time rather than being productive.
  
  
• Traditional programming enables testers to find defects easily because it is well-documented. XP Programming is not structured and it is difficult for testers to find errors by just looking at the screen.