In the early ‘90s, the IBM Consulting Group hired Alistair Cockburn to build a methodology for object-oriented development. Cockburn investigated a large number of software projects and asked to each team to identify the main reasons for their own success. Cockburn has defined Crystal (Cockburn, 2004) as a family of AMs, because he believed that different kinds of projects require different development methodologies.
Top6.1 Introduction
The most well known AMs are Extreme Programming (XP) (Beck, 1999) and SCRUM (Schwaber & Beedle, 2001) but there are several more (Abrahamsson et al., 2002):
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Crystal (Cockburn, 2004)
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Dynamic System Development Method (DSDM) (Stapleton, 1997)
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Lean Software Development (LSD) (Poppendieck & Poppendieck, 2003)
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Feature Driven Development (FDD) (Palmer & Felsing, 2002)
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Agile Modeling (AM) (Ambler, 2002)
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In this chapter we briefly summarize some of them highlighting their specific features.
Top6.2 Crystal
In the early ‘90s, the IBM Consulting Group hired Alistair Cockburn to build a methodology for object-oriented development.
Cockburn investigated a large number of software projects and asked to each team to identify the main reasons for their own success. Cockburn has defined Crystal (Cockburn, 2004) as a family of AMs, because he believed that different kinds of projects require different development methodologies.
All the Crystal methodologies are based on the following paradigm: “strong on communication, light on work products”. Compare to XP (Beck, 1999), the Crystal family shows many differences: XP is based on a well defined set of development rules, on the contrary, Crystal does not include such rigid constraints but gives a lot of freedom to the development team. Hence, this methodology allows a greater individuality inside the team and a more relaxed work habits. Crystal is easier to adopt for a team, but XP produces better results and guarantees a higher productivity.