Mike,
Is the eXtreme Programming (XP) methodology used a lot currently in game development? I just read an article about it in June, 2003 IEEE Software journal and it seems to be a very smart methodology, especially since it takes the software developers sanity into consideration (such as sleep and personal life). It practices a test-driven development (TDD) method designed to delight the customer by providing frequent versions of various specificiation the customer wishes to have present and allowing him to actually play with them instead of just seeing them on the requirements documents. This allows much more direct feedback. It seems that the whole methodology greatly promotes communication between the team, but only of a few minutes at a time. I wonder if this is ever employed in practice as I often here stories of how a programmer goes into his cubicle with headphones on and doesn't take them off until he leaves many hours later and many Jolts later.
If you would like to read the article here is the reference:
Laurie Williams, The XP programmer: The few-minutes programmer, IEEE Software, vol. 20, 3, 2003, pp.16-20.
Nos
Is the eXtreme Programming (XP) methodology used a lot currently in game development? I just read an article about it in June, 2003 IEEE Software journal and it seems to be a very smart methodology, especially since it takes the software developers sanity into consideration (such as sleep and personal life). It practices a test-driven development (TDD) method designed to delight the customer by providing frequent versions of various specificiation the customer wishes to have present and allowing him to actually play with them instead of just seeing them on the requirements documents. This allows much more direct feedback. It seems that the whole methodology greatly promotes communication between the team, but only of a few minutes at a time. I wonder if this is ever employed in practice as I often here stories of how a programmer goes into his cubicle with headphones on and doesn't take them off until he leaves many hours later and many Jolts later.
If you would like to read the article here is the reference:
Laurie Williams, The XP programmer: The few-minutes programmer, IEEE Software, vol. 20, 3, 2003, pp.16-20.
Nos