XPdev hot seat at work experience learned
I proposed new objectives to myself: Programming in XP (hot seat: 2 dev one computer) 1/2 day per week with another developer each week. Here is a summary of DOs and DONTs to keep in mind.
Let’s say there are 2 guys:
Tori: the executor (the guy who have the keyboard and explain what he does) Uke: the learner (the guy who look at the guy who have the keyboard and learn from what he does)
| DO | DON’T |
|---|---|
| Explain the whole concept of XP hot seat, Tori & Uke roles and plan it | Start without briefing, scheduled appointment |
| Predefine the scope 1 day before | start without plan |
| Master the concept of the scope | do a spike in XP as it request a lot of documentation reading |
| Read the documentation the day before | Drive blind |
| Use shortcuts, quick links, snippets, auto completion, syntax highlighting | Use notepad or similar way of development |
| Refine and reduce objective and scope while working | Enlarge the scope and work on more and more stuff |
| Let Tori explain what he is doing | Let Uke take the lead |
| Respect the time window of 15 minutes | Let Tori continue over 15 minutes |
| Stop and re-schedule, redefine scope when it fails (both get stuck by a lack of knowledge for instance) | Continue if it doesn’t work |