One of the most common raps against XP isn’t even true. People think we say that documentation is a bad idea. XP is focused on conversation for maximum effectiveness. Our recommendations on documentation follow from that simple fact.

There are many well-known modeling and design techniques that can be used to bring about a “good design”. An incremental process may limit the applicability of these techniques, which are most powerful when applied and committed to “up front”. Test everything; eliminate duplication; express all ideas; minimize entities:These few simple rules, applied locally, can help a high quality global design to emerge.

One of the most common failings of XP teams is insufficient testing. XP asks for more testing than many teams are used to. But what about projects that need reliability at a substantially higher level? Are they out of luck?

Kent Beck has described XP as designed to go with people’s natural instincts. In this short series of articles, we’ll take a look at how XP accomplishes goals without a need for lots of discipline or management pressure. In this article, the topic is documentation.