Mumbai: The city-based Pragati Software, a leading player in focused corporate IT training sector has initiated Knowledge Refresher Series targeted at the IT and software professionals.

The first in a series of programmes commenced on the topic ''Extreme Programming'', with Dhananjay Savarkar, joint general manager (training and knowledge management, L&T Infotech, as the chief guest and evoked an encouraging response from the participants.

Pragati expects to roll out more such seminars in the future on various other topics of interest. Pradyumn Sharma, managing director, Pragati Software, says: "We want to provide IT professionals a platform to come together to refresh, reconnect, re-establish and strengthen the technical know-how. By focusing on the emerging challenges and trends, we will be able to provide cutting-edge solutions for IT professionals."

Extreme Programming is emerging as a novel alternative to complement an individual programmer''s talent. Essentially, Extreme Programming is a methodology for software development that is flexible and adaptive, with a true emphasises on programmer empowerment.

Sharma introduced the topic and briefed the audience on the pros and cons of the concept. Further he touched upon the 12 commandments of Extreme Programming: The Planning Game, Small Releases, Metaphor, Simple Design, Testing, Refactoring, Pair Programming, Collective Ownership, Continuous Integration, 40-Hour week, Onsite Customer and Coding Standards.

The key values of XP are better communication, simplicity, continuous feedback, as well as courage. Some of the practices of XP sound surprising initially, but at closer scrutiny, are found to deliver very good results, such as pair programming and collective ownership.

The audience comprised IT professionals from organisations like L&T Infotech, Godrej Infotech, Tata Interactive Services, Vaids, Kale Consultants, Emphasis, Mastek, Datamatics, Deloitte Consulting, Savvion, Rave Technologies and Sajjan International.