By Clement James Goebel III, Richard Sheridan and Thomas Meloche
Menlo Institute (http://www.menloinnovations.com)

Abstract

Some Extreme Programming practices such as paired programming and open and collaborative workspaces present challenges to the traditional hiring process as most interview candidates have trouble imagining the transition to such an environment. A traditional interview process might yield candidates who are ill-prepared and perhaps even unwilling to undertake such a dramatic change to their own ideas of software development practices. This article examines how one team met those challenges head on with a practice they came to call "Extreme Interviewing". The results were just as stunning as the Extreme Programming practices themselves.

1.0 Introduction

Market opportunities often present themselves at a time when companies are ill-positioned to take advantage of the opportunity. In this type of situation it is the job of executive management to make the appropriate changes inside of the organization to best pursue the market opportunity. In one such company the available opportunities required a team that could more easily adapt to changing requirements. To address this challenge the company adopted Extreme Programming as the standard methodology for product development. Having restructured their process to handle more dynamic requirements, the management team turned their efforts towards the need for producing software even faster than the team's enhanced productivity could achieve. The executive team decided to expand the development team from twelve developers to twenty-four as soon as possible.

2.0 Key Challenges

The management directive to double the size of the existing development team was clearly not meant to merely increase the body count, but instead needed to quickly increase the productive output of the team. New team members needed to understand the product and the technologies, but more importantly needed to adopt the Extreme Programming practices that had become central to the team's efforts.

Click here to read more.