1 Is Extreme Programming Just Old Wine in New Bottles: A Comparison of Two Cases Merisalo-Rantanen Hilkka, Helsinki School of Economics, Finland Tuunanen Tuure, Helsinki School of Economics, Finland Rossi Matti, Helsinki School of Economics, Finland ABSTRACT This paper explores Extreme Programming (XP) as an information systems development approach and argues that it is mainly old wine in new bottles. We take an interpretive and critical view of the phenomenon. We made an empirical study of two companies that apply an XP style development approach throughout the information systems development lifecycle. The results of our research suggest that XP is a combination of best practices of traditional information systems development methods. It is hindered by its reliance on talented individuals, which makes its large scale deployment as a general purpose method difficult. We claim that XP can be useful for small teams of domain experts, who are physically close to and able to communicate well with the end- users and who are good designers and implementers. However, these skilled and motivated individuals with high working moral can exhibit high productivity regardless of the methods used, if they are not overly constrained by bureaucracy. Keywords: Agile methods, Extreme Programming, information systems development, case study