It is possible to write software that solves real business problems, cheaply and reliably. The recipe is well known, even though it's not easy to do.
I am an Extreme Programmer. I help individuals, teams and organization become more effective. I'm lucky to work as a developer for ThoughtWorks, mostly in the Milano area. I used to teach at Università dell'Insubria.
For example: If you have 200 people working on a project that can be done by 80 (*), your main problem is not one of scaling the methodology but of scaling (down) the project. Of course, if you do that, you will still have to make your approach to software development work for 80 people, but if you started out by trying to make it work for 200 people, you would be on the wrong track.
Charlie Poole on the XP mailing list