It was 1999 when Extreme Programming Explained was ?rst published, making this year's event arguably the ?fth anniversary of the birth of the XP/Agile movement in software development. Our fourth conference re?ected the evolution and the learning that have occurred in these exciting ?ve years as agile practices have become part of the mainstream in software development. These pages are the proceedingsof XP Agile Universe 2004, held in beautiful Calgary, gateway to the Canadian Rockies, in Alberta, Canada. Evidentintheconferenceis thefactthatourlearningis still inits earlystages. While at times overlooked,adaptation has beena core principleof agile software development since the earliest literature on the subject. The conference and these proceedings re- force that principle. Although some organizations are able to practice agile methods in the near-pure form, most are not, re?ecting just how radically innovativethese methods areto thisday. Anyinnovationmustcoexistwithan existingenvironmentandagileso- ware development is no different. There are numerous challenges confronting IT and software development organizations today, with many solutions pitched by a cadre of advocates.
Be it CMM, offshoring, outsourcing, security, or one of many other current topics in the industry, teams using or transitioning to Extreme Programming and other agile practices must integrate with the rest of the organization in order to succeed. The papers here offer some of the latest experiences that teams are having in those efforts. XP Agile Universe 2004consisted of workshops,tutorials, papers, panels, the Open Space session, the Educators' Symposium, keynotes, educational games and industry presentations.