| To inherit, develop and enrich Chinese traditional medicine, the production of traditional Chinese medicine must be modernized. Chinese Traditional Medicine granule is a kind of new method of medicine processing. Through this process, medicinal herbs are manufactured into small, dissoluble granule by modern techniques and preserve its effect. Patient select from the granules according to the prescription, mix them, dissolve them with water and drink. It is a convenient and security procedure.In order to popularize the Chinese Traditional Medicine granule, make it more widely used, producers require a set of machine, which can quickly and freely fetch the granule according to the prescription. The machine can be use in hospital, drug store, etc. It is just the reason we research and development the Intelligent Dispensing System for Chinese Medicine.The Intelligent Dispensing System for Chinese Medicine has two parts: hardware and application software. The Hardware of the machine includes a shelf with approximately 400 medicines box on it, and a device to fetch the medicine. Software is working in a computer that is connected with hardware. The software receives prescription user input, control devices to get the corresponsive medicine, and administrate existing prescriptions.It is a complex process to develop this administrative software, and we spent more than a year and a half to do the work. Software developing means not only the program coding but also make plan and manage the activities of software development. Software Engineering researches how to develop software more effectually. In Software Engineering, those software process models are most important. It is indicated that different processes can make different results. In 2001,a group of top industry experts addressed the Manifesto for Agile Software Development. They create a statement of values and gave principles of agility. Agile represents some features also been noticed in many existing software process models. Extreme Programming,or XP, is a well known software process model that conform with Agile principles. It has a lot of advantages comparing with traditional software process. Though it has 5 years history, "using extreme Programming" is not so popular because there are strict conditions to use it.In this paper, we describe the process developing the software of Intelligent Dispensing System for Chinese Medicine, using eXtreme Programming models. We practiced almost all instruction in XP, some of them are:Understand User's requirement using the tool User StoriesPractice Planning Game, spike velocity of development and then make release plan and iteration planPractice Test Driving Development, using VBUnit, a unit test tool just for VB.Pair Programming, four people in our team are divided into 2 pair Make a set of specifications for VB code and use themAt present, our software has issued 7 versions. Users are satisfied with its good performance, especially the all round functions, friendly interface, stability and high efficiency of maintenance.
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