Every few years, something comes along to stir the software development field into a state of excitement. It may be a passionate rededication to an old idea, or a completely new idea, or simply an old idea dressed up in new clothes to attract the attention of a new generation of developers. Whatever its origin, it will be embraced by some as a silver bullet, rejected by others as dangerous snake oil, and ignored by the majority who simply continue plodding along with whatever tools and techniques they already had.

Today, one of these "somethings" is XP, an abbreviation for "Extreme Programming." But rather than discuss XP as an isolated phenomenon, we decided to cover the more general topic of "light methodologies." For anyone familiar with the concept of methodologies, the term is almost self-defining: it suggests something more formal than hacking but less bureaucratic than the 18-volume monstrosities created by overly zealous consultants in days of yore. While the term sounds intriguing, it's still worth asking whether we're looking at another dose of snake oil, or whether -- in the words of our first authors, Steve Hawrysh and Jim Ruprecht -- this is déjà vu all over again.