I read this three years ago, but it took time and project management experience to give me the real insight into how cool and radical this book is.

Good introduction to Extreme Programming from the creator. Nothing is covered in depth, but the breadth of XP is covered from principles to practices to historical background.

I never got the chance to read the first edition, but a wonderful characteristic of the 2nd ed, is that it consistently interprets XP in terms of lean principles. Loved the stuff at the end relating XP back to where it aligns with or avoids Taylorism, Toyota Production System, etc.

XP is a very mature, well thought through methodology. The counter-intutive (pair programming) and counter-cultural (“extreme”) elements can get in the way, which is a shame because this is the real deal.

I’d recommend this book for anyone doing team-scale software development.

Section 2, on the philosophy of XP, brings in input from other fields and my favorite part of the text.