Extreme Programming and Agile Processes in Software Engineering: 7th International Conference, XP 2006, Oulu, Finland, June 17-22, 2006, Proceedings

Unbelievable, we have reached the seventh edition of the XP2k+n conference! We started at the outset of the new millennium, and we are still proving that agile pr- esses were neither a millennium bug nor a YAF (yet another fad). In its first editions, this conference was a get-together of a few pioneers who - bated about how to make agile processes and methods accepted by the mainstream researchers and practitioners in software engineering. Now agile approach to software development has been fully accepted by the software engineering community and this event has become the major forum for understanding better the implications of agility in software development and proposing extensions to the mainstream approaches. These two aspects were fully reflected in this year’s conference. They were - flected in the keynote speeches, which covered the background work done starting as early as the early eighties by Barry Boehm, definition of the field by Kent Beck, a successful industrial application in a success story by Sean Hanly, the perspective and the future of agile methods in large corporations by Jack Järkvik, and even some - sightful views from a philosopher, Pekka Himanen.