Martin: The cancellation reasons were, AFAIKm not related to how successfully it really was in terms of what project manager would consider successfully - on time and on target.
Still, the case against XP is worth a read. No one should go blindly into anything.
Jay: OOps! fixed your name..
"MSF is Microsoft's process for building software. It is an OK process, doesn't fit in our environment but then it is not built into their toolset. "
So is XP. It won't be built into the toolset, but it will be accomodated by the toolset easily enough.
I read the XP Refactored book and I think it does a pretty good job of highlighting some of the faults of XP. Until that book, I was Gung-Ho XP, but alot of XP practitioners are waving it as the hammer to hit all nails.
XP has its time and place, but it isn't adequate for much larger projects as even some of its creators acknowledge (the book makes references to these comments). However, I think some of its practices have a place everywhere (Unit Testing, Refactoring).
XP also violates the principle that a methodology should try to make best practices (as much as possible) the path of least resistance, since that's what people take in general. XP requires extremely high discipline, and that's hard to maintain.
The book is worthwhile in helping to build a more pragmatic version of the XP methodology.