I think your fear that the existence of successful companies that don't follow XP values and principles disproves their validity and usefulness is unfounded. First of all, looking only at successful companies is a textbook example of survivorship bias. Second, the current U.S. market is anything but competitive, with huge consolidation across industries, not just in tech. I strongly believe that XP values and principles are valuable, important, and useful. They reflect research and practical experience; at the very least Deming, Argyris/Senge, Dijkstra, Amy Edmondson, and many more on the academic side, and on the industry side, aspects of Toyota(TPS/TPDS) and of course many companies and teams are very happily using their own interpretation of XP. Sustainable pace matters, quality matters, taking care of people's needs matters. It's our politics and the market values they promote that need fixing and validation, not XP.
I agree. I would also add that success of a company is important to define. How long did that “success” last? How big was it? Jim Collins in “good to great”/etc does a very thorough job of defining success before embarking on his study.
Maybe if we define success as velocity over many complex pivots + time-to-market of new value (or something similar) over a prolonged period of time, a very different story about XP could emerge.
I think your fear that the existence of successful companies that don't follow XP values and principles disproves their validity and usefulness is unfounded. First of all, looking only at successful companies is a textbook example of survivorship bias. Second, the current U.S. market is anything but competitive, with huge consolidation across industries, not just in tech. I strongly believe that XP values and principles are valuable, important, and useful. They reflect research and practical experience; at the very least Deming, Argyris/Senge, Dijkstra, Amy Edmondson, and many more on the academic side, and on the industry side, aspects of Toyota(TPS/TPDS) and of course many companies and teams are very happily using their own interpretation of XP. Sustainable pace matters, quality matters, taking care of people's needs matters. It's our politics and the market values they promote that need fixing and validation, not XP.
I agree. I would also add that success of a company is important to define. How long did that “success” last? How big was it? Jim Collins in “good to great”/etc does a very thorough job of defining success before embarking on his study.
Maybe if we define success as velocity over many complex pivots + time-to-market of new value (or something similar) over a prolonged period of time, a very different story about XP could emerge.
This makes me really excited for goto Chicago!
Is that happening? If so when?