  In the article urlLink "The Agile Methods Fray" [via urlLink ChaordicEdge ] Tom DeMarco and Barry Boehm dicuss where between agile (XP) and a traditional engineering approach you should place yourself. They both seem to share the view that it's best to be somewhere in the middle for most projects. I kind of both agree and disagree at the same time. What I agree with is that to most problems need a balanced approach. This was something that I had against XP in the beginning, since it seemed to me that it was an extreme approach&#151;do no documentation whatsoever; do no design whatsoever; test everything all the time; and so forth.
But now I have learned that there are room for a somewhat balanced approach in XP. But here is also where I disagree with the article. If you start by saying that the extremes are nothing for me&#151;I'm taking a balanced approach&#151;I think there's a great risk that you will become quite rigid, i.e.
non-agile. I believe that you first should explore the extremes. When you know the extremes like the back of your hand (ok I don't really know CMM &amp; Co like the back of my hand, but I know them enough and I'm not that interested in exploring them further at this moment :-) ) you can make an informed decision of where you want to place yourself. I think that is what the XP'ers suggest when they say that you should start by doing XP by the book, i.e.
an extreme aproach, and then you can adjust the process, i.e. perhaps make it more balanced. To conclude, for me the extreme (in form of XP) is more intriguing than CMM &amp; Co and a balanced approach. At least at this moment. (And CMM &amp; Co has been explored for quite a while and there are not much happening there. Agile approaches has not been that much explored yet, I suspect there are much more to discover!
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