An Adventure into Extreme Programming - Series 1: My Introduction to XP

So I have recently had the opportunity to explore a subject which has held my curiosity for some time: Extreme Programming. For the longest time I have been intrigued by Extreme Programming, occassionally reading about it in some publication here or there. I was never able to get a real grasp on what it was, exactly how it worked, and what the pros/cons were for it.

Well for the last month or so I have been working closely with a company called Pivotal that is helping me develop out CommunityWalk. They are an XP (Extreme Programming) shop that specializes in going into very large companies in the valley and teaching them how to use XP. So I consider myself very fortunate that they see enough potential in CommunityWalk to want to invest in it and grow it out in a very robust manner. This means that I am now able to develop in an XP way and learn for myself what the pros and cons are. As I was unable to find this type of information on the Internet before (although I didn't look very hard), I want to try and write it down to expose what I have learned in simple terms.

So for the next few posts I am going to be writing about my thoughts on XP and why I becoming a complete and absolute convert. My thoughts are based on only a few weeks of XP and I am by no means an expert yet, but I have enough impressions that I feel are solidly grounded, so I want to share those at the very least.