Introducing XP—XP Practice 4: Collective Code Ownership

Microsoft .NET Framework, ASP.NET, Visual C# (CSharp, C Sharp, C-Sharp) Developer Training, Visual Studio

XP Practice 4: Collective Code Ownership

Traditional development teams often divide an application by assigning ownership of components or subsystems to specific individuals. These divisions create bottlenecks that hinder development when the component or subsystem owner is swamped with work. The result is a backlog that affects other team members. The backlog also adds to the stress of the component owner, as she is aware of the bottleneck she is creating.

Collective code ownership eliminates this bottleneck by granting the right to change or enhance any code within the application to any developer. In addition, collective code ownership promotes the transfer of knowledge among all the developers. With the transfer of knowledge, you don’t have to worry about a given individual on the team suddenly becomes unavailable. So, collective code ownership removes yet another bottleneck or risk to the project and improves the development team’s communications.