Extreme Programming Installed Ch 4-6

Reference Information:

Title: Extreme Programming Installed
Authors: Ron Jeffries, Ann Anderson, Chet Hendrickson

Chapter 4: User Stories

Summary:
This chapter is about how to successfully capture customer stories as well as what to do with them.  Customers should write stories down on note cards while making sure to tear the card up and start over without hesitation if there is an issue. Each story should encapsulate about one week of programming work. There should be about 1-2 stories per programmer per month working on the project.

Discussion:
I can see how the constant feedback from the customer would lead to a better product design. I am curious how many programmers in the workforce actually use note cards for customer stories.

Chapter 5: Acceptance Tests

Summary:
This chapter discusses the importance of regular automated acceptance and unit tests. By testing often and rigorously, the number of errors will decrease. The author states that it is the untested parts of a program that are the buggy parts.

Discussion:
The author really seems to be preaching the approach of taking things in small frequent doses. I completely agree with the author on this point. If you try to finish the entire program without unit testing and something goes wrong, it can take forever just to find where the problem is.  

Chapter 6: Story Estimation

Summary:
This chapter describes how to estimate the amount of time a story will take to complete. Each story should be broken up into a point system. A point should be equivalent to how much work a programmer thinks they could get done in a week. Except for when the project is started, it is best to compare stories to try to get a grasp of how many points they should be worth. At the beginning, a sample program should be made to estimate how many points you think the actual story should be worth.

Description:
Everything that the author talks about seems so intuitive. Before reading this I wouldn't have thought of it, but afterwords I don't see how it could be done any other way.