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Runners don't win races just by running fast—they have to run in the right direction. An XP team can't succeed through excellent programming and testing alone—they need the guidance of a good customer or product owner.

The XP customer has the toughest job. We'll look at ways that XP supports them already, and ways that XP could offer more. Compelling and empowered customers, joined with potent teams, can create software with extraordinary value.

Presented by Bill Wake

Bill Wake is an independent consultant and coach. He's the inventor of the XP Programmer's Cube, several Agile teaching simulations, and the author of "Extreme Programming Explored" and the "Refactoring Workbook."

You've likely heard someone compare software development to building a house, an analogy that many feel has damaged software methods for decades with too much up-front planning and not enough timely, useful feedback. Extreme Programming changes that by asking the question, "How little can we do and still produce great software?"

This introduction to the values, principles and practices of Extreme Programming draws on ideas from Lean Manufacturing as well as Kent Beck's revised description in his second edition of Extreme Programming Explained.

Presented by J. B. Rainsberger

J. B. Rainsberger is the Founder of Diaspar Software Services, where he coaches both individual programmers and entire teams in value-driven software development practices. His book, JUnit Recipes is the top-selling book for Java programmers about JUnit, testing and test-driven development. Joe has been an XP practitioner, researcher, presenter and author since 2000.

On an XP project the customer tests (or storytests, as they are sometimes called) serve a dual purpose. First, they function as the executable measure of progress—indicating unambiguously when a given story is complete and guarding against regression bugs for all future work. An equally important aspect of customer tests, however, is to serve as a mechanism through which the team arrives at a common understanding of the domain.

This tutorial will demonstrate how to use FitNesse—a popular open source framework—for expressing and automating customer tests. We will explore how FitNesse tests can be written in such a way that they effectively communicate the underlying business rules. And you will appreciate how collaborating on such tests has the potential to greatly improve the way that business people and development teams interact.

Presented by Jeff Nielsen

Jeff Nielsen is Chief Scientist of Digital Focus, where he coordinates the dissemination and adoption of agile methodologies by both internal and client development teams. Jeff has over 18 years of commercial software development experience—the last five of these using Extreme Programming and its cousins. Jeff spearheaded the first large-scale XP project at Digital Focus: a real-time web-based auction system that continues to process billions of dollars of trades annually. Since then, he has coached a variety of agile teams for clients including America Online, McKesson, and Fannie Mae.

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Clients of Digital Focus will join us to describe how adopting XP in their development organizations has affected various aspects of their company life, ranging from programmer productivity all the way down to the bottom line.

The idea is simple: work on an XP project for a day!

But there is a twist. In case you've never seen an XP project before and aren't familiar with practices like Test-Driven Development, Automated Acceptance Testing and Planning with User Stories, our guides will help you get started.

What do I do?

When you walk into the Project Room, you can either dive right in or ask one of our guides to talk you through the basics of how the project works: our programming practices, our planning practices and the tools we use to make it happen.

If you are ready to get to work, first look for someone working alone, because that person needs a partner. Feel free to ask the room, "Would anyone like some help?" If everyone else is getting along, then walk up to the Story Board and sign up to work on a user story, then ask for someone's help and sit down at an empty workstation or pull our your laptop and join the network.

You'll want to know what the user story means, so ask a Customer to chat about the work that needs to be done. The Customers will be easy to identify. You can work with the Customer to design a few acceptance tests, giving you and your partner a place to start. Start coding, but don't forget to write a test first!

When you've made some progress and you're ready to share your work with the rest of the group, commit your changes, but keep an eye out for the Build Safety Indicator. If the lights go red, someone will stop the presses until the project gets back on track.

Feel free to wander in and out of the Project Room throughout the day, as well as participating in Open Space or those all-important hallway conversations that make a conference so successful. We hope you'll enjoy the experience of working on an XP team for a day!