We outline the course goals, introduce the participants, and take inventory of their expectations.

XP introduction – practices, principles, values

eXtreme Programming is known as a collection of highly practical practices.  Less well known, and at least as important are the principles and values behind the practices. In an interactive presentation we outline the practices of XP and explain how the practices reinforce each other. After this presentation, you’ll understand how the practices relate to the principles and values.

XP Game

We simulate the heartbeat of an XP (or Scrum) project in a very short time frame.

The participants experience the planning game and learn a very effective and efficient way to estimate the relative effort features require.

Test driven development Introduction

We explain, aided by cause-and-effect diagrams, short- and long-term effects of Test Driven Development (TDD). The participants understand how TDD can add value to their way of working.

Test Driven Development demonstration

The trainers evolve, together with the audience, a design. We use TDD to grow the design, show the benefits of TDD on real code, and show the participants the dynamics of pair programming.

If the audience is up for it, we rotate in participants, replacing one of the trainers. This way, a group activity unfolds, as the participants take over the class from the trainers, who resort to facilitating the class. This form is also known as a coders dojo: The audience can comment on the design (when all the tests run), suggest how to make the code run (when tests fail), the pair at the keyboard decides what actually makes it into production code.

At the end of the demonstration participants have an intuitive understanding of how TDD works, have more understanding of the effects of TDD on their work, and perhaps already some hands-on experience.