Experience ReportsXP 2026

EXPERIENCE REPORTS

XP 2026 — 27th International Conference on Agile Software and Systems Development

April 8-11 – São Paulo, Brazil

DESCRIPTION

The Experience Reports Track invites practitioners, researchers, and agile enthusiasts to share their real-world stories, hard-fought lessons, and practical insights from applying agile and lean methods in diverse contexts. This track provides an opportunity for you to contribute your observations, successes, challenges, and advice through a written report and an accompanying talk at the XP 2026 conference.

Whether your experience reflects a remarkable success, a surprising failure, or something in between, we welcome your voice. By sharing your journey, you help others in the community learn, reflect, and evolve their own practices. We are looking for good stories. Submit your Experience Report here!!!. You only need to initially submit an extended abstract.

The Experience Reports Track provides the opportunity for you to share observations, hard-fought wisdom, and practical advice through a paper and accompanying talk at the conference. An experience report is a first-hand description of challenges faced, approaches taken, observations, and insights. Unlike a case study, an experience report is personal. We encourage authors to introduce themselves to their readers and to reflect on their experience. We invite potential experience reporters to submit a proposal that describes in more detail an original, unpublished experience related to agile and lean software development and what you intend to focus on in your written report. The experience reports will be oriented toward industry practitioners and welcoming to interested academics.

If your proposal is accepted, you will then be shepherded as you write your report. Experience reports are short papers (maximum 8 pages) that will be published (authors will be provided a file template). Authors retain the copyright to their work and sign a permission form granting XP 2026 the right to publish their report online. Authors of accepted proposals are further expected to prepare and deliver a presentation at the conference. Oh’…. and by the way authors are granted a discount on the conference fee.

Important Dates

• Initial Submission deadline: January 14, 2026.
• Notification of acceptance for shepherding: January 20, 2026.
• Shepherding Begins: January 20, 2026.
• Shepherding Ends: March 1, 2026.
• Submission of Final Experience Report: March 6, 2026.

All dates are defined as AoE (Anywhere on Earth).

Track Chairs

• Wagner Fusca
• Natali Rocha
• Joe Yoder

DESCRIPTION

The Experience Reports Track invites practitioners, researchers, and agile enthusiasts to share their real-world stories, hard-fought lessons, and practical insights from applying agile and lean methods in diverse contexts. This track provides an opportunity for you to contribute your observations, successes, challenges, and advice through a written report and an accompanying talk at the XP 2026 conference.

Whether your experience reflects a remarkable success, a surprising failure, or something in between, we welcome your voice. By sharing your journey, you help others in the community learn, reflect, and evolve their own practices.

Proposals are submitted electronically via the EasyChair submission system by the defined deadline. You do not need to upload a full paper as part of your initial submission, but you are encouraged to write an extensive abstract and submit a detailed proposal or outline, sharing highlights of your experience and what you intend to focus on. If your proposal is accepted, you will get Shepherding support (see below) and feedback to help you write your report. You only need to initially submit an extended abstract.

We encourage you to give us enough information so we can make an informed decision and ask you clarifying questions.

Important Dates

• Initial Proposal Submission deadline: January 14, 2026.
• Notification of acceptance for shepherding: January 20, 2026.
• Shepherding Begins: January 20, 2026.
• Shepherding Ends: March 1, 2026.
• Submission of Final Experience Report: March 6, 2026.

All dates are defined as AoE (Anywhere on Earth).

Topics of Interest

Consider these areas if you are looking for ideas to focus on in your experience report. Topics of particular interest to the conference include, but are not limited to:

GenAI Trends and Practices

• Pair programming with AI and emerging practices
• AI-assisted refactoring
• AI for Ops
• AI-generated tests aligned with TDD
• Domain Modeling meets GenAI
• XP Meets Agentic AI
• Social, ethical, and managerial implications of AI in engineering

Delivering Value and Creating New Business

• Continuous Integration / Continuous Delivery
• Modeling and understanding customer value
• The Lean start-up, including experimentation and MVP
• How Architecture and Design affect Agility

Large-Scale Agile

• Adopting and adapting Agile and Lean in large projects and organizations
• Global software development and offshoring

Agile Transformations

• Agile practices and their evolution
• Novel practices and techniques related to requirements, testing, architecture, development, deployment, UX design, marketing, product definition
• Experiments in software development and their relation to Agile methods
• Tools for Agile Development
• How your Agile practices have evolved

Human, Organizational, and Managerial Aspects

• Social aspects of teams and groups
• Forming Agile organizations
• Agile coaching and mentoring
• Management and governance
• Measurement and metrics for projects, programs, processes, and teams
• Increasing social, environmental, and economic sustainability

Submissions

An experience report is a first-hand description of challenges faced, approaches taken, observations, and insights. Unlike a case study, an experience report is personal. We encourage authors to introduce themselves to their readers and to reflect on their experience.

We invite potential experience reporters to submit a proposal that describes in more detail an original, unpublished experience related to agile and lean software development, and what you intend to focus on in your written report. The experience reports will be oriented toward industry practitioners and welcoming to interested academics.

If your proposal is accepted, you will then be shepherded as you write your report. Authors of accepted proposals are further expected to prepare and deliver a presentation at the conference. Oh’… and by the way, authors are granted a discount on the conference fee.

Proposals are submitted electronically via the EasyChair submission system:

https://easychair.org/my/conference?conf=xp2026

You do not need to upload a full report as part of your initial submission, but you are encouraged to write an extensive abstract and submit a detailed proposal sharing highlights of your experience and what you intend to focus on.

We encourage you to give us enough information so we can make an informed decision and ask you clarifying questions.

Shepherding

We know it’s not easy to get ideas onto paper. Whether you’re a first-time author or you already have some publications under your belt, we can all benefit from some guidance and help.

‘Shepherding’ is a process where more experienced authors guide and coach you through writing your experience report paper. If your proposal is accepted, you will be assigned a shepherd to work with you to help you shape your paper and get it ready for publication.

Shepherds work closely with authors, reviewing drafts and freely giving advice. Shepherds ask clarifying questions and suggest improvements. But ultimately, it is you, the author, who decides what to tell and how to tell it. A shepherd is not an editor, although they may generously make detailed comments on how to revise your paper.

Once the shepherd agrees that your report is acceptable, you will submit your final version to the track co-chairs, who will check that it is ready for publication and conforms to our publishing style guidelines.

Formatting

Experience reports are short papers (typically 6 to a maximum 8 pages) that will be published on the conference website. All final experience reports that are published must conform to the Springer LNBIP formatting and submission instructions. Read the instructions for authors here. . Authors retain the copyright to their work and sign a permission form granting XP 2026 the right to publish their report online.

Review Criteria

These questions might help you decide how to focus your experience report:

• How did you uniquely adopt, adapt, evolve, blend, or scale Agile practices?
• How have you uniquely tackled architecture, development, design, usability, quality assurance, deployment, marketing, product definition, requirements, or documentation?
• How did you introduce Agile practices to your organization and manage the transition to an Agile culture?
• What were the challenges you faced? How successful were you in overcoming them? What challenges remain?
• What mistakes did you make? What insights have you gained that others could learn from?
• If you’ve been doing Agile development for a long time, how have your values or ways of working changed? What are you doing now and why?

Helpful Resources

• How to Write a Successful Experience Report Conference Proposal
• An Experience Report Guideline
• Perfect XP Abstract Coach