The Crystal Methods, or How to Make a Methodology Fit

Alistair Cockburn

Tutorials · Process

Tuesday, 14:00, 3 hours 30 minutes | Meeting Room 12

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This tutorial is for experienced developers, team leaders, methodologists and technology selectors trying to choose or design a methodology for their organization. Just as projects vary in size, criticality and priorities, and so should your methodology. The strengths and weaknesses of the organization, the specific people, even the office layout affects how the team best works, and should influence the methodology. Crystal is a family of highly tolerant, lightweight methodologies built from core principles, techniques for tuning them to your specific situation, and specific examples to copy from. Inside the rule set for a Crystal methodology may be any topic or convention the team agrees to, including level of document detail and formality, reviews used, office seating and even quasi-unofficial parties. The Crystal methodology family aspires to be the most tolerant, habitable and yet effective methodology for any particular project team. Besides the Crystal family genetic code, this tutorial describes the principles and techniques for shaping a methodology to the project-team combination, introduces the colors in the Crystal family, compares different examples of the Crystal family to each other relative to the principles, and shows the differences between Crystal Clear and XP. Expect to learn the methodology tuning principles, and experience how easy and fruitful a methodology-tuning session can be. Out of the three hours, about 2 hours is lecture, describing the genetic code for Crystal, why and how to tune a methodology, and methodology design principles. About half an hour is open question and answer; about half an hour is for the attendees to work together in small groups to do some methodology tuning on their own, preferably standing at flipcharts.