Extreme research: applying extreme programming practices to research

Abstract

[Introduction]: A few years ago, my colleagues and I embarked on a journey that had multiple rationales and multiple outcomes. We had all been software developers at some point in our professional lives and we noticed a growing interest in the software developer community about so-called Agile methods, and eXtreme Programming (XP) in particular. None of us had explicitly applied these methods in the projects in which we had been a part, but we did have some other colleagues who had and still were. As academics, these Agile methods interested us because our developer colleagues were reporting significant benefits of using them. Many of the practices seemed to reflect the way these developers preferred to work and since traditional software development methods had a relatively low adoption rate, perhaps these new methods provided a more relevant approach. We also saw a research opportunity, a gap, with many practitioner reports but little academic research focussing on Agile methods. Another rationale was to build research capacity by mentoring young researchers in designing, conducting and reporting research.