CSEE Transport is a French company that makes automatic train control systems,
from trackside hardware to central control room software.

We first used XP on an 8 person project developing a metro supervision
system. The system is soft real time and distributed, developed using
C++ and libraries from ILOG.

XP was definitely a bit of a revolution here, but management were
convinced to try it because of the promise of higher productivity and
because of the high emphasis on RelentlessTesting (we develop
safety-critical systems).

That project started in January 2000, and the original scope was
finished essentially on time and budget some 18 months later. The
project continued with extensions and maintenance, with a reduced
team. The project was quite successful. Developers were delighted with
XP, managers were interested largely because it made developers happy
and also because they got good quality reporting. The main problems
were blamed on not having an OnsiteCustomer and not having
AcceptanceTest''''''s.

We thus tried to improve this on a second project (a command/control
system for a high speed railway section), by having a
person playing the role of proxy Customer and Tester, and
automating AcceptanceTest''''''s from the outset (including the GUI, which
was driven and verified by Python scripts via CORBA and using some
event handling tools from the GUI library).

This second project was not a success (globally, not just the part
done with XP). The point of view of the team was that, considering the
circumstances, we were doing extremely well, and XP was very much
appreciated. The point of view of upper management was that we, and
XP, could conveniently be blamed for everything, because we had chosen
to be different. I was asked to leave the project and to quit
introducing new ideas. I decided to quit altogether. Just in case you
wondered, that did not solve their problems, by any measure.

-- ''DominicWilliams''
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