Early community building: a critical success factor for XP projects

Extreme programming (XP) literature and discussions often view successful projects only as customer-driven product development: planning, coding and testing an unfolding series of prioritized units of vertical functionality. I claim, however, that a successful project also requires a prospering community, comprising an introspective group of committed professionals communicating effectively, and using a well-understood, stable process. Weakness on any of these fronts presents a high risk of failure; therefore, I advise every XP project´s members to actively engage in building their community, such that it reaches its critical level of development already by the first internal release. To help in this endeavor, I provide a comprehensive list of activities and attitudes to practice and avoid during the first release.