This post originated from an RSS feed registered with Agile Buzz by James Robertson. Original Post: XP as Scientific Method Feed Title: Cincom Smalltalk Blog - Smalltalk with Rants Feed URL: http://www.cincomsmalltalk.com/rssBlog/rssBlogView.xml Feed Description: James Robertson comments on Cincom Smalltalk, the Smalltalk development community, and IT trends and issues in general. Latest Agile Buzz Posts Latest Agile Buzz Posts by James Robertson Latest Posts From Cincom Smalltalk Blog - Smalltalk with Rants

Larry McCay of SDTimes has an interesting comparison of XP (Extreme Programming) to the Scientific Method:

XP builds on best practices such as unit testing, pair programming and refactoring. The basic principles of XP are communication, simplicity, feedback and courage; applying the methodology goes through the following five steps:

1. Choose story.
2. Write tests.
3. Run tests.
4. Refine, program and refactor 14repeat as needed.
5. Go to step 1, repeat until all stories are complete.

Let 19s compare against the Scientific Method, which was first introduced by Francis Bacon. It was not used as a strict discipline until Isaac Newton later in the 17th century.

The goal of the Scientific Method is to provide a set of steps to ensure the development of provable theories that may lead to new and greater understandings of the workings of nature and its systems. These theories are gradually stepped up in generality until the highest level, at which point there may be opportunity for unification of theories.

The Scientific Method consists of six steps, and you can see the similarity with XP:

1. Make observations.
2. Create hypotheses.
3. Make predictions.
4. Conduct experiments.
5. Modify hypotheses if predictions are not met and go to step 3.
6. Declare hypothesis as theory.

Go read the whole thing - it's an interesting article.