Easing up the XP

We have not reached the desired productivity level just yet even though development is faster for each day. Since we have a challenging dead line we have decided to ease up a little on the XP to get faster forward. This is what we did.

We first had a retrospective with the guys in the team to get their idea of what is slowing each of them down. Pair Programming and inexperience with TDD was the key problems. Some said that coding in pair takes longer than doing it alone since you need to explain everything you do. Some said that thinking about creating the test first probably took three times as long as just doing it.

The actions we decided on was

1. If you get stuck with the Test First, just do the code and write the test after.
2. If you feel that you don't add anything while Pairing, go to the task board and start investigating the next task.
3. Don't ask too much and don't tell too much while Pair Programming. Stick to the problem you're working on.