Scrum vs Extreme Programming: Was XP Right All Along?

Could it be that the most popular methodology is, in fact, holding teams back from achieving their maximum performance?

«Let’s back to the past and fix it, Marty», prompted by the Author.

In 2024, high-performing software teams deploy multiple times per day, recover from incidents in less than an hour, and maintain failure rates below 5%. And despite having research with undeniable numbers and strategies to move forward, there are still many organizations struggling to achieve these results. The question is, could their performance be affected by their chosen Agile methodology, and is this preventing them from achieving their maximum potential?

Numbers that speak for themselves

One of the problems we’ve always had in this profession is that it’s very difficult to obtain objective numbers to know how well one strategy or another is working when it comes to development.

This has led to the creation of multiple measurement methods, but often using numbers and statistics with little guarantee. Some examples were lines of code produced —which tends to lead to overly complex code—, number of tasks or tickets —which can be split to inflate results—, count of resolved bugs —which doesn’t distinguish between trivial changes like a color or architectural…