Reflection

Reflection
Before I started this subject, I had a little knowledge about it from other subjects namely Project Management and Quality Assurance (PMQA), and Information System Development Approaches (ISDA). When I chose it, I expected to learn about and practice all the good features in XP. These may include Test-First and Pair Programming. However there was a problem with test-first as the project we were assigned was developing GUI only. Thus it was hard to practice that test-first yet it was not bad as I could think about how to solve this kind of problem. Therefore when I have this problem again I would not need to repeat all the processes that I have already attempted to solve the problem. I could also learn from the XP book that GUI classes should not have logic method inside it.

Although there was initially a problem with the testing, I could practice test-first later and now can feel how good it is. I actually stated to use this practice in another project of mine once I practiced it in XP subject and felt the value of it. It actually improves the quality of my programme, and I can also easily maintain the programme since I have all the test cases, so I just need to test all of them after I change anything. Testing practice might be considered as waste of time but it is actually not. I can feel it is indeed worthwhile. I especially like the xUnit test programme that allows me to save the time to create test programme and the time to test.

Another thing that I like in this subject is a communication. Like other projects, the communication is a very important factor, yet it is extremely important in XP since it requires two programmers to code together with sharing one computer and there is no one who owns any specific code. Two people work together and everyone can change any code made by any person, so the failure of the communication can be the disaster of the project. As XP requires more communication than other projects it might strengthen the relationships among the members and all the members can easily understand each other. Thus the team can improve the quality of the product. From the XP, I could feel that it is very important and could learn more how to interact and communicate with others. If I have XP project or other systems development methodologies in IT industry, I think I can handle the problem may occur during the project, because I could experienced many problems and could practice many things and how to find the solution in this subject.

I could also learn about many good applications and tools such as SVN and JUnit. Those things are the ones I knew before but did not have a chance to use. In XP, I could use both and found the convenience of those. I will definitely use those when I do other projects in the future as now I can feel that those tools can improve not only my productivity but also the quality of my product. I am in fact using JUnit now in another project.