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It was 1999 when Extreme Programming Explained was first published, making this
year’s event arguably the fifth anniversary of the birth of the XP/Agile movement in
software development. Our fourth conference reflected the evolution and the learning
that have occurred in these exciting five years as agile practices have become part of
the mainstream in software development. These pages are the proceedings of XP Agile
Universe 2004, held in beautiful Calgary, gateway to the Canadian Rockies, in Alberta,
Canada.
Evident in the conference is the fact that our learning is still in its early stages. While
at times overlooked, adaptation has been a core principle of agile software development
since the earliest literature on the subject. The conference and these proceedings rein-
force that principle. Although some organizations are able to practice agile methods in
the near-pure form, most are not, reflecting just how radically innovative these methods
are to this day. Any innovation must coexist with an existing environment and agile soft-
ware development is no different. There are numerous challenges confronting IT and
software development organizations today, with many solutions pitched by a cadre of
advocates. Be it CMM, offshoring, outsourcing, security, or one of many other current
topics in the industry, teams using or transitioning to Extreme Programming and other
agile practices must integrate with the rest of the organization in order to succeed. The
papers here offer some of the latest experiences that teams are having in those efforts.
XP Agile Universe 2004 consisted of workshops, tutorials, papers, panels, the Open
Space session, the Educators’ Symposium, keynotes, educational games and industry
presentations. This wide range of activities was intended to provide an engaging expe-
rience for industry practitioners, leading consultants, researchers, academics, and stu-
dents. Feedback from the 2003 conference was used to adjust the content to better suit
the needs of the attendees. The sessions at the conference were selected through the
dedicated work of the Track Chairs and the Program Committee, to whom we are ex-
tremely grateful. Their names are listed in the pages that follow and the contributions
of these individuals to the experience of the attendees of the conference cannot be over-
stated. Over 100 submissions were received to the various activities, with roughly half
accepted into the conference. Each submission was reviewed by at least 3 members of
the Program Committee, with an average of just under 5 reviewers per submission. The
accepted papers are presented in their entirety in these proceedings. Summaries of the
workshops and tutorials are presented as a reference for those who attended the confer-
ence. The results of the Open Space session can be accessed via the conference website
at xpuniverse.com or agileuniverse.com.
The invited speakers to the conference were Christopher Avery, Robert Biddle,
Eric Evans, Alejandro Goyen, Craig Larman, Brian Marick, Robert C. Martin, Mary
Poppendieck, and Herb Sutter. These speakers represent the breadth and depth of the
conference in terms of three main threads: technical practices; business and project
management; and teamwork. |
