Product Description

Carefully researched over ten years and eagerly anticipated by the agile community, Crystal Clear: A Human-Powered Methodology for Small Teams is a lucid and practical introduction to running a successful agile project in your organization. Each chapter illuminates a different important aspect of orchestrating agile projects.

Highlights include

Attention to the essential human and communication aspects of successful projects
Case studies, examples, principles, strategies, techniques, and guiding properties
Samples of work products from real-world projects instead of blank templates and toy problems
Top strategies used by software teams that excel in delivering quality code in a timely fashion
Detailed introduction to emerging best-practice techniques, such as Blitz Planning, Project 360º, and the essential Reflection Workshop
Question-and-answer with the author about how he arrived at these recommendations, including where they fit with CMMI, ISO, RUP, XP, and other methodologies
A detailed case study, including an ISO auditor's analysis of the project

Perhaps the most important contribution this book offers is the Seven Properties of Successful Projects. The author has studied successful agile projects and identified common traits they share. These properties lead your project to success; conversely, their absence endangers your project.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #302867 in Books
• Published on: 2004-10-29
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 336 pages

From the Publisher
Carefully researched over ten years and eagerly anticipated by the agile community, Crystal Clear: A Human-Powered Methodology for Small Teams is a lucid and practical introduction to running a successful agile project in your organization. Each chapter illuminates a different important aspect of orchestrating agile projects.

Highlights include

Attention to the essential human and communication aspects of successful projects

Case studies, examples, principles, strategies, techniques, and guiding properties

Samples of work products from real-world projects instead of blank templates and toy problems

Top strategies used by software teams that excel in delivering quality code in a timely fashion

Detailed introduction to emerging best-practice techniques, such as Blitz Planning, Project 360º, and the essential Reflection Workshop

Question-and-answer with the author about how he arrived at these recommendations, including where they fit with CMMI, ISO, RUP, XP, and other methodologies

A detailed case study, including an ISO auditor's analysis of the project

Perhaps the most important contribution this book offers is the Seven Properties of Successful Projects. The author has studied successful agile projects and identified common traits they share. These properties lead your project to success; conversely, their absence endangers your project.

From the Back Cover

"The best thinking in the agile development community brought to street-level in the form of implementable strategy and tactics. Essential reading for anyone who shares the passion for creating quality software."

—Eric Olafson, CEO Tomax

"Crystal Clear is beyond agile. This book leads you from software process hell to successful software development by practical examples and useful samples."

—Basaki Satoshi, Schlumberger

"A very powerful message, delivered in a variety of ways to touch the motivation and understanding of many points of view."

—Laurie Williams, Assistant Professor, North Carolina State University

"A broad, rich understanding of small-team software development based on observations of what actually works."

—John Rusk

"A superb synthesis of underlying principles and a clear description of strategies and techniques."

—Géry Derbier, Project Manager, Solistic

"Alistair Cockburn shows how small teams can be highly effective at developing fit-for-purpose software by following a few basic software development practices and by creating proper team dynamics. These small teams can be much more effective and predictable than much larger teams that follow overly bureaucratic and prescriptive development processes."

—Todd Little, Sr. Development Manager, Landmark Graphics

"I find Cockburn's writings on agile methods enlightening: He describes 'how to do,' of course, but also how to tell whether you're doing it right, to reach into the feeling of the project. This particular book's value is that actual project experiences leading to and confirming the principles and practices are so...well...clearly presented."

—Scott Duncan, ASQ Software Division Standards Chair and representative to the US SC7 TAG and IEEE S2ESC Executive Committee and Management Board and Chair of IEEE Working Group 1648 on agile methods

"Crystal Clear identifies principles that work not only for software development, but also for any results-centric activities. Dr. Cockburn follows these principles with concrete, practical examples of how to apply the principles to real situations and roles and to resolve real issues."

—Niel Nickolaisen, COO, Deseret Book

"All the successful projects I've been involved with or have observed over the past 19 or so years have had many of the same characteristics as described in Crystal Clear (even the big projects). And many of the failed projects failed because they missed something—such as expert end-user involvement or accessibility throughout the project. The final story was a great read. Here was a project that in my opinion was an overwhelming success—high productivity, high quality, delivery, happy customer, and the fact that the team would do it again. The differing styles in each chapter kept it interesting. I started reading it and couldn't put it down, and by the end, I just had to say 'Wow!'"

—Ron Holliday, Director, Fidelity Management Research

Carefully researched over ten years and eagerly anticipated by the agile community, Crystal Clear: A Human-Powered Methodology for Small Teams is a lucid and practical introduction to running a successful agile project in your organization. Each chapter illuminates a different important aspect of orchestrating agile projects.

Highlights include

• Attention to the essential human and communication aspects of successful projects
• Case studies, examples, principles, strategies, techniques, and guiding properties
• Samples of work products from real-world projects instead of blank templates and toy problems
• Top strategies used by software teams that excel in delivering quality code in a timely fashion
• Detailed introduction to emerging best-practice techniques, such as Blitz Planning, Project 360º, and the essential Reflection Workshop
• Question-and-answer with the author about how he arrived at these recommendations, including where they fit with CMMI, ISO, RUP, XP, and other methodologies
• A detailed case study, including an ISO auditor's analysis of the project

Perhaps the most important contribution this book offers is the Seven Properties of Successful Projects. The author has studied successful agile projects and identified common traits they share. These properties lead your project to success; conversely, their absence endangers your project.

© Copyright Pearson Education. All rights reserved.

About the Author

Alistair Cockburn is a renowned software expert and accomplished instructor. He carefully separates advice to experts from advice to newcomers. Newcomers to agile development will find a step-by-step introduction to selected agile techniques previously not described elsewhere. Experts will see new strategies and techniques to try, as well as the contextual information they need for advanced decision-making.

© Copyright Pearson Education. All rights reserved.

Customer Reviews

Best single book in the Agile canon
Alistair has always been an interesting thinker, one worth reading for the clarity of his thought and the insights he brings from his very open minded observation and talking with development teams. With his new book, Crystal Clear, however, Alistair has become a really good writer. In fact, I would say he has written the single best book in the collection of writings on Agile methodologies.

If you want the most comprehensive overview of Agile, you still must read Highsmith's Agile Software Development Ecosystems. If you want the most poetic, read Kent's White Book. For amazingly clear and simple writing and thinking, Poppendieck. But if you want a really really useful book on how to actually do agile, and you don't have that much time to invest, get Alistair's book.

One of the things I really like is the variety of different writing styles from chapter to chapter: from the email "love letters" written to Crystal (Alistair's methodology muse), to the simple exposition of seven properties underlying agile, to the clearly illustrated strategies and techniques, to work product samples, and to the final one page chapter giving an expert (level 3) view of the whole methodology. His writing is constantly engaging, inventive, conversational and even fun.

While Alistair writes about one methodology (and only one of his Crystal family of methodologies), the book is still universal. It covers the basic things that few agile teams would disagree with. Even if you work in a large, complex environment, this is the place to start.

-May your travels be light and the green bar always on your forward horizon. --Michael

Read it, no matter what methodology you're using
It was through Alistair Cockburn's earlier writings that I 'got it' that good people, not methodologies and tools, deliver successful projects. Although Crystal Clear is meant only for small teams (there's a Crystal color for every size team), the properties, practices, principles, examples and techniques in this book would benefit any software development team.

The subtitle begins "A Human-Powered Methodology...", and that's the key to this book. Cockburn understands how to allow people to do their best work. The book is so well-organized and well-written, even readers new to agile development will have no trouble understanding how and why Crystal Clear works, and how to implement it.

I'm part of a Scrum/XP team, but I took away many helpful and practical ideas from this book. No matter what methodology you use - even if you work in a traditional waterfall environment - you will find much you can use here.

Best since XP - maybe even better...
Despite the fact that a very large number of books about agile methodologies have come out since the beginning af agile software development in 2001 - this Chrystal Clear is a major breakthrough:

In this book Cockburn takes the reader by the hand, shares his deep insight in people-centric software development and give precise instructions and advise on how to run sofware projects with communication and human values as the base. You learn a number of proporties, strategies and techniques. I find it hard to tell the difference between these. I think they are all best practices - but really usefull and very well proven best practices.

Unlike most other books on methodoligies Chrystal Clear explains itself in depth - and manages on the same time to communicate with the same "lightness" that should be performed in development projects. The lightness is especially present (and refreshing) in the section about the work products, which is the horror of all other methodologies I know... Cockburn learns us, that most work products makes the biggest difference in the project, if they are made on the walls on whiteboards or stickers - as opposed to the usual way where work products are made on computer screens and saved (or "hidden") on server disk drives...

Being a full blown methodology - with detailed instructions on how to run your project - I see Chrystal Clear as the first full blown leightweigh methodology since eXtreme Programming - and recommend the book highly to all project managers and everybody else who wants to succeed with their software development projects.

Ole Jepsen, Founder of the Danish Agile User Group