极限编程（Extreme Programming）—价值、规则及管理

极限编程（Extreme Programming）—价值、规则及管理

march-bird lucian yjf taopin wl jazz韩伟 nullgate Simon[AKA](转载自cutter.com)　　　　2003年09月15日

　　Values and Principles
　　
　　价值和规则
　　
　　On Saturday, 1 January 2000, the Wall Street Journal (you know, the "Monday through Friday" newspaper) published a special 58-page millennial edition. The introduction to the Industry & Economics section, titled "So Long Supply and Demand: There's a new economy out there -- and it looks nothing like the old one," was written by Tom Petzinger. "The bottom line: creativity is overtaking capital as the principal elixir of growth," Petzinger states.

　　在2000年一月一日周六时候，华尔街日报（周一到周五出版的）用一个58页的版面发布了一个千僖年纪念版。在篇首的有关工业及金融的介绍里标着Tom Petzinger.写的："长久的需求与召唤：经济新的增长点――显得同以往不同"。底下的一行 Petzinger 写着："创造性正代替'万金药'的资本在成为首要的因素"。

　　Petzinger isn't talking about a handful of creative geniuses, but the creativity of groups -- from teams to departments to companies. Once we leave the realm of the single creative genius, creativity becomes a function of the environment and how people interact and collaborate to produce results. If your company's fundamental principles point to software development as a statistically repeatable, rigorous, engineering process, then XP is probably not for you. Although XP contains certain rigorous practices, its intent is to foster creativity and communication.
　　
　　Petzinger并没有谈论少数天才的创造性，而是谈了以下群体的创造性――从组到部门。一旦我们撇下天才们的个体创造，创造性就是环境的功能，而人们运用并互相协助而达到我们的结果的能力。如果你的公司认为软件开发只是一个统计上的重复试验，刻板的，技术性的过程，那么XP对于您也许并不合适。虽然XP中也有技术实践里的严格，但是XP本身是追求"创造"与"沟通"。

　　Environments are driven by values and principles. XP (or the other practices mentioned in this issue) may or may not work in your organization, but, ultimately, success won't depend on using 40-hour work weeks or pair programming -- it will depend on whether or not the values and principles of XP align with those of your organization.

　　环境是靠价值同规则共同驱动的系统。XP（或者其他类似的）可能、也可能不适合您的单位，可是，应该澄清的是成功并不是只靠每周40小时的疯狂工作或者配对编程，也不是依靠XP之中应用在您单位中的价值或者是规则。

　　Beck identifies four values, five fundamental principles, and ten secondary principles -- but I'll mention five that should provide enough background.

　　Beck指出了四个价值，五个基本规则，以及十个辅助规则--不过我要提到是这五个规则。

　　Communication. So, what's new here? It depends on your perspective. XP focuses on building a person-to-person, mutual understanding of the problem environment through minimal formal documentation and maximum face-to-face interaction. "Problems with projects can invariably be traced back to somebody not talking to somebody else about something important," Beck says. XP's practices are designed to encourage interaction - developer to developer, developer to customer.

　　沟通：是的，沟通，可是，这里似乎没有新的东西在里面？沟通主要是看人们自己的看法，XP构建的基本是人与人，通过最简洁的文档，最直接的面对面沟通获得对任务环境的理解。

　　Simplicity. XP asks of each team member, "What is the simplest thing that could possibly work?" Make it simple today, and create an environment in which the cost of change tomorrow is low.

　　简洁：XP问每个开发组成员："可能实现的最简洁的方法是什么？"。今天所保持的简洁，可以为降低明天由于变更所带来的费用

　　Feedback. "Optimism is an occupational hazard of programming," says Beck. "Feedback is the treatment." Whether it's hourly builds or frequent functionality testing with customers, XP embraces change by constant feedback. Although every approach to software development advocates feedback -- even the much-maligned waterfall model -- the difference is that XP practitioners understand that feedback is more important than feedforward. Whether it's fixing an object that failed a test case or refactoring a design that is resisting a change, high-change environments require a much different understanding of feedback.

　　反馈：Beck说："对于编程而言，乐观主义是一种冒险。"，"而反馈则是相应的解决良药?quot;无论是用反复的构建或者频繁的用户功能测试，XP都能不断地接收到反馈。虽然每次对软件开发策略进行研讨时，我们都会说及反馈--即使是非常有害的瀑布模型--不同的是XP的实践者认为反馈比起前馈(feedforward)来更为重要。无论是对测试失败的代码进行修改或者是对用户拒收的软件从新返工，开发环境的快速变化要求开发人员对反馈有更好的认识。

　　Courage. Whether it's a CMM practice or an XP practice that defines your discipline, discipline requires courage. Many define courage as doing what's right, even when pressured to do something else. Developers often cite the pressure to ship a buggy product and the courage to resist. However, the deeper issues can involve legitimate differences of opinion over what is right. Often, people don't lack courage -- they lack conviction, which puts us right back to other values. If a team's values aren't aligned, the team won't be convinced that some practice is "right," and, without conviction, courage doesn't seem so important. It's hard to work up the energy to fight for something you don't believe in.

　　勇气：无论您是使用CMM方法或者是XP的方法，方法使用的本身是要求勇气的。许多地方将勇气定义为做某件事情的权利，即使被迫去做其他的事情。开发人员经常借口压力而发出带有许多缺陷的产品，并对此加以坚持。然而，更进一步的应该包括其他的正确的不同的东西进来。通常，人们并不是缺少勇气，而是缺少一种让正确实践获得承认的理由，而且，也不坚信这点，勇气不像看起来那么重要。而如果你对之没有信心，那么是很难尽力工作的。

　　"Courage isn't just about having the discipline," says Jeffries. "It is also a resultant value. If you do the practices that are based on communication, simplicity, and feedback, you are given courage, the confidence to go ahead in a lightweight manner," as opposed to being weighted down by the more cumbersome, design-heavy practices.

　　"勇气并不只是方法"，Jeffries说道，它是一种最终的价值。如果你在一种基于"沟通"，"简洁"，"反馈"的模式下工作，你将获得勇气，越往前信赖就越不重要。

　　Quality work. Okay, all of you out there, please raise your hand if you advocate poor-quality work.
Whether you are a proponent of the Rational Unified Process, CMM, or XP, the real issues are "How do you define quality?" and "What actions do you think deliver high quality?" Defining quality as "no defects" provides one perspective on the question; Jerry Weinberg's definition, "Quality is value to some person," provides another. I get weary of methodologists who use the "hacker" label to ward off the intrusion of approaches like XP and lean development. It seems unproductive to return the favor. Let's concede that all these approaches are based on the fundamental principle that individuals want to do a good, high-quality job; what "quality" means and how to achieve it -- now there's the gist of the real debate!

　　优质的工作：好，如果你们中有赞成劣质工作的话，那么请举手离开这儿吧。不论你是一个Rational Unified Process，CMM，或是XP的赞成者，其本质的观点"你怎样定义质量"与"什么样的活动会赢得高质量"，定义"无缺点"质量是这个问题的一个方向。Jerry Weinberg的定义是"质量是对多数人有益"

　　Managing XP

　　管理XP
　　
　　One area in which XP (at least as articulated in Beck's book) falls short is management, understandable for a practice oriented toward both small project teams and programming. As Beck puts it, "Perhaps the most important job for the coach is the acquisition of toys and food." (Coaching is one of Beck's components of management strategy.)

　　对于针对小型项目以及编程而言，在XP（至少是Beck的书中）里对管理的欠缺是可以理解的，。就如Beck写的，"对于教练(coach)来说，或许最重要的工作就是获得玩具同食物"（指导是Beck的管理战略中的一个组成部分）

　　With many programmers, their recommended management strategy seems to be: get out of the way. The underlying assumption? Getting out of the way will create a collaborative environment. Steeped in the tradition of task-based project management, this assumption seems valid. However, in my experience, creating and maintaining highly functional collaborative environments challenges management far beyond making up task lists and checking off their completion.

　　同许多的程序员一样，他们推荐的管理策略像是：躲避。下面的假定呢？躲避会建立一个协作的环境，在传统的基于任务的管理里，这个假定是有效的。然而，根据我的经验，创造并维持一个协作的环境会挑战管理远离编制任务列表以及检查。