The characteristics of XP teams

Abstract

What is special about XP teams? Adopting XP involves social change as well as technical change, but what characterises a successful team? What happens when a team takes on the 12 practices and four underlying values? This paper contributes empirical findings that help answer such questions. We expand on previous work that suggested four characteristics of an XP team by analysing the data from both the previous study and from a further study of another mature XP team. While there are clear differences between the two teams in terms of operating environment, their detailed implementation of the 12 practices and the team’s overall character, we find that the four characteristics are present in both teams. The paper describes the characteristics in detail and discusses how those characteristics are embedded in the detail of the practices of XP as observed in the two particular settings.