1. XP@Quinary Piergiuliano Bossi Free University of Bolzano - Bozen NAME workshop on “Agile Methodologies in Software Engineering” Bolzano - Bozen, October 17th 2002

2. © 2002 Quinary SpA Company profile Quinary S.p.A., one of the leading system integration companies in Italy, provides IT services to the following industries: Fixed and Mobile Telecommunications, Financial Services, Media, Energy, Utilities, Business Services, IT and R&D Organizations. Quinary has developed a multichannel ‘framework’ that includes a set of solutions like Content Management, Commerce, Marketing Applications, Knowledge Management, Messaging e Wireless Services. The framework is backed by strategic partnerships with important suppliers of e-business technologies. Structure Founded in 1985, being part of Tiscali group since May 2000. Organization Based on competency centres supported by a service infrastructure Offices: Milano & Roma Resources: more than 80 professionals

3. © 2002 Quinary SpA We got to XP out of an interest in software development, attracted by a work style which promises to be: More reliable More time & money effective More flexible More suitable for custom development Less risky for the Customer Especially in a continually evolving business environment Complementary to Quinary’s traditional system integration approach Our interest in XP and/or AMs – the premise

4. © 2002 Quinary SpA Our interest in XP and/or AMs – the present Starting from June 2001: We have elaborated an optional scope approach based on XP Real Customer empowerment Able to steer We have tuned the process on internal projects We have delivered to a customer a medium-sized project in the Financial domain

5. © 2002 Quinary SpA How XP has been introduced – the origin The team was already practicing XP in a different company: XP has been introduced there in order to Work more effectively Deliver business value through software more rapidly  Good, Fast & Cheap! XP has been bootstrapped with a mentoring help from XPLabs But: Environmental conditions were not holding anymore at original workplace XP approach fit into Quinary culture and tradition

6. © 2002 Quinary SpA How XP has been introduced – the research Like nomads in the desert searching for water: The core of the team has decided to move to Quinary Quinary accepted in advance how the team wanted to implement XP The team has grown adding new people with a sort of distillation process

7. © 2002 Quinary SpA How XP has been introduced – the roots At the foundation of the team there are the following values: Courage Humility Simplicity Feedback Communication Collaboration Respect

8. © 2002 Quinary SpA Adopted practices The team has implemented the full set of well known practices Planning game, Pair programming, Open workspace,... Plus some local adaptations and/or enhancements: Tracking & planning based on 30’ story points Daily project journal Project and Iteration retrospective Continuous learning Iteration probe

9. © 2002 Quinary SpA Adopted practices – work in progress Practices are not frozen, rather they are continuously modified as time goes by: In order to be more effective Gaining continuous feedback from running projects

10. © 2002 Quinary SpA Success The team has succesfully delivered to a customer a medium-sized project: Portfolio watching application for personal bankers Stocks watchlist, index watchlist, portfolio, search, technical charts, news Legacy data about portfolio composition integrated with near time data about market trends Update of the watchlist and portfolio revaluation every 15 seconds Although initial great uncertainty the project started anyway Major steering after 4 months

11. © 2002 Quinary SpA Success – the metrics Tracking Source code Process

12. © 2002 Quinary SpA Impact on business Quinary has been able to develop a new approach: Particularly suitable for custom development projects Especially under tough conditions (uncertainty, risk, variability) Enriching its offer

13. © 2002 Quinary SpA Long term goals & operational plans Improve the sinergy between traditional system integration & XP Build a foundation of AMs Enhance visibility of optional scope approach

14. © 2002 Quinary SpA Our expectations We expect that: XP and AMs gain a much broader acceptance in the business community In order to do that there is a need of better data coming from the ground field There will be more collaboration between AMs & traditional Software Engineering Complexity & Chaos theory will help to model and manage evolutionary aspects of requirements elicitation New design concepts, new programming paradigms shall enhance communication aspects in code