XP Practices Are the Missing Piece for AI-Assisted Development
Details
For this online event, we will have the opportunity to receive Paul Hammond as a speaker.
After a brief introduction of our community, Paul will deep dive on why XP Practices Are the Missing Piece for AI-Assisted Development.
Abstract:
AI coding agents are changing how we write software, but what actually makes them work well in practice? In this talk, Paul shares his experience using Extreme Programming practices — TDD, mutation testing, continuous refactoring, and small increments — alongside AI agents in a real project. He covers what's worked, what hasn't, and why practices like writing tests first and mutation testing feel more important now than ever when you're not the one writing the code. He also touches on how Domain-Driven Design and hexagonal architecture have helped structure the project in ways that make AI-assisted development smoother. The talk includes a live feature build with Claude Code agents — done for real, with all the risk that entails.
About Paul:
Paul Hammond is a contract product engineer based in Manchester, UK. He's spent over two decades building software at organisations including the BBC, Sky, Electronic Arts, and Equal Experts, specialising in TypeScript, TDD, and functional programming. He's a long-time advocate of Extreme Programming practices and regularly delivers TDD workshops to development teams. He's currently experimenting with combining XP techniques and AI agents, and maintains an open-source Claude Code framework that encodes these practices into agent workflows (github.com/citypaul/.dotfiles).