XP is the new SCRUM

This is the blurb that introduces Agile Software Development with SCRUM, the seminal book by Ken Schwaber and Mike Beedle that explained Scrum, or rather SCRUM as it should be correctly spelled, to a wide audience.

eXtreme Programming is an ideal many software shops would love to reach, but with the constant pressures to produce software quickly, they cannot actually implement it. The Agile software process allows a company to implement eXtreme Programming quickly and immediately-and to begin producing software incrementally in as little as 30 days! Implementing eXtreme Programming is easier said than done. The process can be time consuming and actually slow down current software projects that are in process. This book shows readers how to use SCRUM, an Agile software development process, to quickly and seamlessly implement XP in their shop-while still producing actual software. Using SCRUM and the Agile process can virtually eliminate all downtime during an XP implementation.

This message in a bottle from a not-so-distant past - the book was published in 2001 - is interesting in at least 2 respects:

• Its first statement is still valid, eighteen years later: XP is still an “ideal many software shops would love to reach” but find unattainable because of various forms of pressure,
• SCRUM was explicitly advocated as a process to “quickly and seamlessly implement XP”, a promise it mostly failed to deliver or that was lost in the fury of agile transformations that arose in the wake of SCRUM takeovers of the software development methods scene.

Will 2019 be the year we’ll finally see XP being recognised?