Crystal Clear Methodology —
Simplicity and Perfection for Business
Applications

• Peo­ple-ori­ent­ed method­olo­gies are more ben­e­fi­cial than process-ori­ent­ed ones.
• The method­ol­o­gy should be tai­lored to the indi­vid­ual project and team — there is no uni­ver­sal appli­ca­tion devel­op­ment methodology.

1. Rapid deliv­ery of use­ful code: Tran­si­tion­ing from large, infre­quent code deploy­ments to small­er, more fre­quent releases.
2. Improve­ment through reflec­tion: Gath­er­ing insights on what worked well and poor­ly in the pre­vi­ous ver­sion of the soft­ware to improve the next version.
3. Osmot­ic com­mu­ni­ca­tion: Cock­burn described the per­cep­tion and exchange of infor­ma­tion among devel­op­ers work­ing in the same room as back­ground noise, sim­i­lar to osmosis.

• Clear: 2 to 8 peo­ple work­ing togeth­er in one or adja­cent offices
• Yel­low: 10 to 20 people
• Orange: 20 to 50 people
• Red: 50 to 100 people

The genet­ic code of Crys­tal Clear con­sists of:

• Eco­nom­i­cal­ly coop­er­a­tive game mod­el: Cock­burn views soft­ware devel­op­ment as a series of ​“games” con­sist­ing of inven­tion and com­mu­ni­ca­tion, con­strained by resources. Each game has two goals: deliv­er soft­ware in this game and pre­pare for the next game in the series. Each new project requires new strategies.
• Cho­sen pri­or­i­ties: Com­mon to all Crys­tal method­olo­gies are two pri­or­i­ties: safe­ty and devel­op­ment efficiency.
• Cho­sen char­ac­ter­is­tics: These enhance the pri­or­i­ty of safe­ty. Three are basic (rapid and fre­quent deliv­ery of code, per­son­al com­mu­ni­ca­tion, improve­ment through reflec­tion), while the remain­ing four are addi­tion­al: per­son­al safe­ty, focus, easy access to experts, and a qual­i­ty tech­ni­cal envi­ron­ment with auto­mat­ed testing.
• Cho­sen prin­ci­ples: One con­tin­ues the key direc­tion of indi­vid­u­al­iz­ing the methodology: 

The lev­el of detail in soft­ware require­ments, design doc­u­ments, and plan­ning depends on the pro­jec­t’s specifics, includ­ing the degree of per­son­al team inter­ac­tion and the dam­age that can be caused by unde­tect­ed errors.

Cyclic Process of Crys­tal Clear

Most projects with Crys­tal Clear con­sist of six cycles, defin­ing the respon­si­bil­i­ties and tasks of the project team:

1. Project cycle: Although the project itself is a prod­uct unit, it is usu­al­ly fol­lowed by anoth­er project repeat­ing the cycle. The project cycle con­sists of three parts: prepa­ra­tion (team assem­bly, 360° research, method­ol­o­gy deter­mi­na­tion), a series of two or more deliv­ery cycles, and a ​“com­ple­tion rit­u­al”. Dura­tion: from a few days to weeks.
2. Deliv­ery cycle: Involves recal­i­brat­ing the soft­ware release plan, a series of one or more iter­a­tions result­ing in a test­ed inte­grat­ed code, deliv­ery to real users, and a ​“com­ple­tion rit­u­al”. Dura­tion: 1 week to 3 months.
3. Iter­a­tion: Con­sists of three major parts: iter­a­tion plan­ning, dai­ly and inte­gra­tion cycle activ­i­ties, and the pro­jec­t’s ​“com­ple­tion ritual”.
4. Work­ing week/​day: The choice of day or week as the time unit of the cycle depends on the pro­jec­t’s for­mat and team. Exam­ples include week­ly depart­ment meet­ings, team leader reports, and ​“brown-bag” sem­i­nars (lunch dis­cus­sions on project issues).
5. Inte­gra­tion peri­od: Devel­op­ment, inte­gra­tion, and sys­tem test­ing. Some teams per­form con­tin­u­ous build-test­ing with a ded­i­cat­ed machine, while oth­ers inte­grate dai­ly or three times a week. The short­er the inte­gra­tion cycle, the bet­ter. Dura­tion: 30 min­utes to 3 days (depend­ing on team experience).
6. Devel­op­ment: Writ­ing and check­ing a part of the code. This is the core work of a pro­gram­mer in agile devel­op­ment. A team mem­ber takes a small task, pro­grams a solu­tion (ide­al­ly with test­ing), and checks it in con­fig­u­ra­tion with the entire sys­tem. Dura­tion: 15 min­utes to sev­er­al days.

Strate­gies and Tech­niques of Crys­tal Clear

• 360° Research: At the start of the project, the team needs to under­stand how use­ful and mean­ing­ful the prod­uct is and whether it can be cre­at­ed with the avail­able resources and tech­nolo­gies. The project is exam­ined in areas such as busi­ness val­ue, require­ments, nec­es­sary tech­nolo­gies, project plan, team com­po­si­tion, and cho­sen method­olo­gies. Imple­men­ta­tion takes a few days to 1 – 2 weeks.
• Ear­ly Win: A vic­to­ry unites the team and boosts each mem­ber’s con­fi­dence. In appli­ca­tion devel­op­ment, the ear­ly win strat­e­gy involves find­ing the first piece of work­ing code, often a small ele­ment of use­ful sys­tem func­tion­al­i­ty. This small vic­to­ry helps team mem­bers learn each oth­er’s work styles, users get an ear­ly idea of the sys­tem, and spon­sors see the team’s capability.
• Incre­men­tal Archi­tec­ture Change: The sys­tem archi­tec­ture should evolve as tech­no­log­i­cal and busi­ness require­ments change over time. The strat­e­gy address­es this by allow­ing the team to incre­men­tal­ly change the archi­tec­ture with­out dis­rupt­ing the sys­tem’s over­all func­tion­al­i­ty. The same strat­e­gy can be applied to func­tion­al changes in the final system.
• Infor­ma­tion Radi­a­tors: Dis­plays placed where peo­ple can see them while work­ing or rest­ing. They show nec­es­sary infor­ma­tion with­out need­ing to ask extra ques­tions, embody­ing the Crys­tal Clear rule ​“more com­mu­ni­ca­tion, few­er inter­rup­tions”.
  
  The infor­ma­tion radi­a­tor should be large, eas­i­ly acces­si­ble, sim­ple to use and read, and con­tain up-to-date infor­ma­tion. Exam­ples include Scrum and Kan­ban boards and a work­ing glos­sary inter­pret­ing project terminology.

Pop­u­lar Tech­niques Include:

1. Form­ing the Method­ol­o­gy: Crys­tal Clear cus­tomiza­tion occurs in two stages: project inter­views (cre­at­ing a mini-library of orga­ni­za­tion­al expe­ri­ence high­light­ing the pro­jec­t’s strong and weak points) and a method­ol­o­gy for­ma­tion work­shop (ana­lyz­ing expe­ri­ence to enhance strengths and com­pen­sate for weak­ness­es). The infor­ma­tion from the first step is used in the second.
2. Reflec­tion Work­shop: Peri­od­i­cal­ly, the team should take a one-hour break to con­duct a ​“reflec­tion work­shop,” dis­cussing what works well or poor­ly, what needs improve­ment, and what can be done dif­fer­ent­ly in the next project stages.
3. Blitz Plan­ning: Allows spon­sors, users, and devel­op­ers to joint­ly cre­ate a project roadmap with time constraints.
4. Dai­ly Stand-up Meet­ings: Short meet­ings to deter­mine the pro­jec­t’s sta­tus, progress, and issues. These meet­ings are not for dis­cus­sion, only for prob­lem iden­ti­fi­ca­tion. Results are record­ed in an online task man­ag­er or on a phys­i­cal Kan­ban board.
5. Pair Pro­gram­ming: In this process, two peo­ple work on one pro­gram­ming task on a sin­gle device. Pair pro­gram­ming is often crit­i­cized for elim­i­nat­ing indi­vid­ual approach­es to tasks and requir­ing high-qual­i­ty inter­per­son­al rela­tion­ships with­in the project team. An alter­na­tive tech­nique, ​“slide-by-slide,” involves two peo­ple sit­ting close enough to see each oth­er’s screens but work­ing on dif­fer­ent tasks on sep­a­rate work­sta­tions. This cor­re­sponds to the con­cept of ​“osmot­ic interaction.”

Rec­om­mend­ed Read­ing on Crys­tal Clear

Key resources for study­ing Crys­tal Clear include:

• “Crys­tal Clear: A Human-Pow­ered Method­ol­o­gy for Small Teams” by Alis­tair Cock­burn: The essen­tial book for under­stand­ing the method­ol­o­gy from its cre­ator. It con­tains many case stud­ies, exam­ples, and mini-guides on imple­ment­ing indi­vid­ual ele­ments of Clear in an organization.
• “Pair Pro­gram­ming Illu­mi­nat­ed” by Lau­rie Williams: A detailed analy­sis of one of Crys­tal Clear’s tech­niques, pair pro­gram­ming. The book pro­vides prac­ti­cal advice on using PP in soft­ware development.
• “Agile Soft­ware Devel­op­ment: The Coop­er­a­tive Game” by Alis­tair Cock­burn: Explains the con­cept of soft­ware devel­op­ment as a ​“coop­er­a­tive game of inven­tion and com­mu­ni­ca­tion.” Cock­burn expands on ideas from Crys­tal Clear in this book, lat­er for­mal­iz­ing them in ​“Crys­tal Clear: A Human-Pow­ered Method­ol­o­gy for Small Teams.”
• The offi­cial web­site of Crys­tal Clear’s cre­ator: While not a book, it offers a wealth of infor­ma­tion, includ­ing inter­views, dia­grams, blog posts, and dis­cus­sions on the method­ol­o­gy. The only down­side is the unfriend­ly design of the site.