"An Informative Build is a build that tells us what the state of our development is so that we can make an informed decision. We need an informative build, because otherwise Continuous Integration is just a waste of our time.

That’s right, I said Continuous Integration is a waste of time. It is a waste of time, because simply running a build doesn’t help us unless that build can also tell us what we need to do. An Informative Build:

Fails when something is wrong, letting us know that our system is broken and we must fix it.
When it fails it tells us precisely why it failed so that we know what we have to do to fix it.
When nothing is wrong it doesn’t fail. We shouldn’t be wasting cycles chasing down errors due to brittle tests or external dependencies."

generalizable for many domains, not just software development: "However, as a program evolves, there’s a good chance that the Design In Code will not include all the good things we now understand. We have a better Design In Head. When the design in our head is enough better than the one in the code, it can pay off to bring the code closer to what we now understand."

"XP argues that for emergent design to work, you need to keep the code as simple as possible – no unnecessary complexity – and to refactor as you learn. It is also important, XP says, to program in pairs and to frequently switch who sits with whom, so that everyone on the team has spent time with each part of the system. Then everyone must be present in all meetings and work in an office space that encourages communication."

"...overtime is any time when you wish you weren't at the office"

"Agile teams are at the forefront of a movement. But the front lines are the bloody lines. We're going to get knocked around a little."

Conversation from Agile 2005 conference on Beginner's Mind and Promiscuous Pairing in software development teams. Worth thinking about in a research lab context.

Collaborative special-topic Google search subsetting engine

Recommended for anybody who thinks they "know" "how" to "program" and yet still expect me to hire them, ever, clueless as they clearly are.

Real story list for a real XP project, a moderately complicated web2.0 site.

Amusing side-by-side juxtaposition