Crystal Methods
ü Crystal
Methods is an object-oriented development method created by Alistair Cockburn
at IBM in 1991.
ü Crystal
Methods was created by interviewing real-world software practitioners, rather
than following any one of numerous textbooks on object-oriented methods.
ü The
interviews uncovered ideas important to the success of software development
such as good communication, high morale, and developer access to end users.
Projects that followed these practices were successful more often than not,
while those that didn't invariably failed.
ü Teamwork,
frequent delivery, and customer collaboration were also found to be key
characteristics of successful projects.
ü Crystal
Methods is a family of 20 distinct agile methods, which are depicted by a
two-dimensional grid. Imagine life, essential money, discretionary money, and
comfort on the y-axis and clear, yellow, orange, red, and maroon on the x-axis.
Crystal Methods consist of seven broad stages: (1) project cycle, (2) delivery
cycle, (3) iteration cycle, (4) integration cycle, (5) week and day, (6)
development episode, and (7) reflection about the process.
ü A
large agile method, Crystal Methods also consists of seven properties, five
strategies, nine techniques, eight roles, and 25 documents.
ü The
latest version of Crystal Methods is a composite of practices from other agile
methods. Whereas its information radiators come from Extreme Programming and
Scrum, its daily stand-ups, burn charts, and reflection are from Scrum, and
side-by-side programming, release plans, and iteration plans derive from Extreme Programming. Although Crystal Methods
embraces the values of agile methods, only a small fraction of the software
community is using it.