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eXtreme Programming has some problems in the marketing department, not to do with its efficacy (everyone is starting to get a feel for how well it works) but to do with its image.

That’s not a process - that’s a pamphlet!

A great thing about XP is the simplicity of the solutions that result when it is used well. This simplicity is as extreme and the moniker suggests - and this is the first marketing problem. When a marketer comes in to sell a solution, and throws down one of the XP books, there must be a look of incredulity on the faces of management.

Based on the books, XP can look ‘flimsy’, or, quite literally ‘lightweight’. Compare XP installed it to the ‘weight’ of the RUP for example. And the results of using RUP or one of the ‘up-front’ processes has a reassuringly weighty result - shelves full of wordy and exhaustive (exhausting) specifications.

Of course by thhe time all these volumes have been filed, there may not be a line of real code, and almost certainly there are no tests. But tests and code are lightweight and hence invisible to many managers.

Perhaps a solution might be to print out the code every week and file it behind your XP workstations - given that there is often twice as much test as implementation the XP project will trounce any non-XP project.

In defence of our forests however, a better idea is to make available the test results. CruiseControl is good for this - any manager likes to see a web page with a lot of complicated sounding test names, and even more the pass rate up around 100% will make them feel better.

And any manager will enjoy going to meetings with RUP colleagues and saying ‘I’ve got 150 tests and we’re running at 100% green, how’s your project doing?’

Kovar/Hall

This brings back all my memories of slaving over a hot bunsen burner at Adelaide Uni, or dissecting a rat to find out what’s inside - as if you couldn’t just look in a book, and anyway they’ve already been tortured by the Psych first years anyway…

Makes the point that the biggest security risks are the user’s passwords, and single points of failure - in computer and real-world security
The Atlantic | September 2002 | Homeland Insecurity | Mann

A top expert says America’s approach to protecting itself will only make matters worse. Forget “foolproof” technology

Elke is one of those people with a theme tune - a song that always seems to play on the radio just when she enters the room, or that a busker takes up with gusto while she walks down the street.

Unfortunately for her, it is The Girl From Ipanema.