Think Simply

Roy came to XP from a Big 5 consulting firm that will remain nameless to
protect the guilty. He was used to a methodology that came on a CD…because that's
the only medium it would fit on. On his first day working at Ken's company, Ken
asked him to write a little code for a spike. Roy spent four hours on the problem and
came up with something ridiculously complex, and he had a headache. Seeing his
pain, Ken came over and "helped" him refactor. Within thirty minutes, Ken had an
elegant solution with about one-third the code. Yes, Roy felt like an idiot.
It seems obvious that the simplest solution is probably right, but this has been
forgotten. When you are taking your first steps with XP in the real world, nothing
could be more important. XP is an answer to the question, "How little can we do and
still create great software?".
Simplicity is easier than complexity in the long run. Certainly, coming up with
the simplest thing that could possibly work takes some skill. Most often, though, the
barrier that keeps us from doing this is a predisposition to doing complicated things.
Maybe this makes us feel smarter.
You should be like a child (we know saying this will be held against us forever).
Kids often don't know the complicated way to do something. They just assume the
simple way will work, and they go for it. XP requires you to do the same thing. Just
do it and see if it works. This is especially true when you start.
Try the XP practices and see if they work. If they don't, respond just enough to
make them work. Simple.