elegant chaos

I had a conversation last night which reminded me of this sneaking suspicion I have about Extreme Programming - which I may have blogged before (but I can’t find my own post if I did!).

Basically it revolves around the fact that I’d be far less likely to want to work with a programmer who had absolutely no knowledge of or interest in XP, unit testing, refactoring etc.

Conversely, I’d be instinctively keen to work with someone who is interested in it, or already doing it. To the extent that I suspect I wouldn’t really care whether we actually DID it at all.

Which leads me to wonder just how much the actual process matters, and how much it’s just a filter to use in order to select the right people to work with.