We owe a debt of gratitude to Elisabeth Hendrickson for her contribution of the “Exploratory Testing” section. Her expertise and writing skill made the material sparkle. For more of Elisabeth’s writing, visit http://www.testobsessed.com/.
We stole good ideas wherever we could find them. Kent Beck, Ron Jeffries, and Ward Cunningham each had a hand in the ideas that led to XP, and we stole liberally from those. In addition to XP itself, Kent Beck introduced us to the idea of XP practices as études. Ward Cunningham introduced us to the notion of technical debt, a concept we use heavily. Brian Marick’s series of essays, “Agile Testing Directions,”[1] influenced our thoughts on agile testing and the role of testers on agile teams.
James had the opportunity to work with Joshua Kerievsky on an Industrial XP (IXP)[*] project for half a year. He learned a lot from that project; the Vision practice in particular was inspired by IXP’s Project Chartering practice. David Schwartz and Amy Schwab of True North pgs, Inc.,[†] provided the specific vision format that we use, as well as the term project community. Their Mastering Projects workshop is excellent; take it when you have the opportunity.
Thank you to our editor, Mary Treseler O’Brien, for providing vision (where necessary), trust (where appropriate), and deadlines (where frightening). This book would not be what it is without you gently nudging us in directions different from our original ideas.
Thanks also to our army of reviewers, who provided over one thousand comments and suggestions on our mailing list. In particular, thanks to Adrian Howard, Adrian Sutton, Ann Barcomb, Andy Lester, Anthony Williams, Bas Vodde, Bill Caputo, Bob Corrick, Brad Appleton, Chris Wheeler, Clarke Ching, Daði Ingólfsson, Diana Larsen, Erik Petersen, George Dinwiddie, Ilja Preuß, Jason Yip, Jeff Olfert, Jeffery Palermo, Jonathan Clarke, Keith Ray, Kevin Rutherford, Kim Gräsman, Lisa Crispin, Mark Waite, Nicholas Evans, Philippe Antras, Randy Coulman, Robert Schmitt, Ron Jeffries, Shane Duan, Tim Haughton, and Tony Byrne for their extensive comments. Special thanks to Brian Marick, Ken Pugh, and Mark Streibeck for their comments on the completed draft.
Every work builds on what came before. I was fortunate to have not just one, but many giants to stand on. Without the inspired work of Kent Beck, Alistair Cockburn,Ward Cunningham, Tom DeMarco, Martin Fowler, Ron Jeffries, Timothy Lister, Steve McConnell, and Gerald Weinberg, I wouldn’t have anything close to the understanding of software development I have today. It’s thanks to their example that this book exists. In particular, thanks to Alistair Cockburn for generously inviting me to his roundtable and introducing me to the agile community.
If giants enabled me to contribute to this book, then Kim Eaves and the Denali team brought the stepladder. Without their enthusiastic support, I never would have been able to try that crazy XP thing. Thanks also to Rob Myers for his ever-friendly consideration of my rants.
I also gratefully acknowledge my coauthor and friend, Shane Warden. This project morphed from a little 100-page second edition into a 400-page monster. You didn’t complain once. Thanks for putting up with me. (And hey! Nice book.)
Finally, thank you, Neeru, my loving and patient wife. I used to think authors thanking their families was cliché. Now I understand. I couldn’t have finished this book without your support.
Thanks to Jim for arguing with me while writing the first version of this book (it’s better for it) and for convincing me that the second edition was worth doing.
Thanks to Allison and Andrew for the tools we used to write this book.
Thanks to my family for supporting me (and not grumbling too much while I sat upstairs and wrote very slowly), and to my friends for dragging me out of my house once in a while.
Thanks also to the other contributors to Parrot and Perl 6 for being unwitting collaborators, examples, and victims of some of the ideas in this book. The work we do continually amazes me.