Extreme Programming Refactored: The Case Against XP

Overview

Talkin About Documentation

(Sing to the tune of My Generation by The Who)

We don t need to write it down Talkin bout documentation

Cause we switch our pairs around Talkin bout documentation

We are always feelin fine We don t do documentation Don t document and don t design We don t do documentation

Cowboy coders come on in We don t do documentation! We re always coding with a grin We don t do documentation!

It s the latest agile sensation . . . Just write code, skip documentation

No documentation No documentation, baby

I felt that it seriously impacted my ability to quickly come up to speed on the project when I joined them. There were literally no documents or diagrams that I could look at to understand the implementation at a high level. I was immediately pointed to the code . . . ^[2] ”Timothy Fisher

Documentation in XP is one of its more controversial subjects. XPers claim repeatedly that they actually create lots of documentation; perplexed observers notice that most of this documentation is either source code, is written on informal (often physical) media such as pieces of cardboard, or is based in an organic project Wiki that evolves along with the architecture.

For this reason, the arguments regarding documentation in XP tend to be paradoxical and confusing. Our favorite retort, though, is that XP has documentation in the form of spoken conversations.

^[1] Mark Collins-Cope, Interview with Robert C. Martin, ObjectiveView ( http://www.ratio.co.uk/ov4.pdf), p. 36.

^[2] See the Voice of eXPerience: Oral Documentation sidebar later in this chapter.