« Crystal Clear A Human-Powered Methodology for Small Teams

I’ve heard about Crystal for the first time from my former cool colleague Ben Stopford but I never had the chance to read the book, so here I am, this blog post follows the ones about XP and Scrum, I’ll probably read again Lean Software Development and then my revise exercise will be finished (unless you can suggest me some new cool (agile) methodology!)

To start with, the book is big, scary big, it’s 300+ pages. Fortunately Alistair Cockburn suggests on the first pages to select only chapter 9, 2 and 3 if you’re already familiar with Agile, so I did, complitely skipping the others.

Crystal Clear in a paragraph

Alistair writes:

The lead designer and two to seven other developers in a large room or adjacent rooms,using information radiators such as whiteboards and flip charts, having easy access to expert users,distractions kept away, deliver running, tested, usable code to the users every month or two (quarterly at worst), reflecting and adjusting their working conventions periodically.

Surprise, Crystal is just this, it’s well known agile practises, nothing new, however then the book explains more in deep how to achieve this agility it adds some bits to Scrum and XP methodologies.

Osmotic communication

Agile is all about communication, if the whole team will sit in the same room communication will benefit, with active or passive listening. The author points out that the Team Leader of the project should sit in the room with the team, I would add that also any project manager, scrum master should follow this rule. To get the mood of the team, to answer quickly some questions or correct some assumptions nothing works better than sitting all together.

When osmotic communication is in place, questions and answers flow naturally and with surprisingly little
disturbance among the team.

Office layout and office furniture, sofas for discussion, email machine, no concave desks.

Alistair points out also the importance of the office layout, of the chair, having sofas to have a more informal and friendly discussion and describes concave desks as an obstacle to Pair Programming.

Iterative Development

One of the aspects I’ve liked of this book is the focus on the team happiness, on the humans. Rather than “justifying” iterations in order to deliver value to the customer, the author says that iterations will improve the consciousness of the team of its own velocity.

Fixed-length iterations allow the team to measure their speed of movement the project’s velocity.

Fixed lengths iterations give that rhythm to the project that people describe as the project’s “heartbeat.”

The results of an iteration may or may not get released.

I would add that every single sucessful iteration should be celebrated, every unsuccessful investigated, since the iteration is an heartbeat shouldn’t be longer than a week.

Personal Safety

Personal safety is described as:

being able to speak when something is bothering you, without fear of reprisal

an early step toward trust. to build trust, there must be exposure

in hand with amicability, the willingness to listen with goodwill

A typical not agile team will have a lead/architect that never makes (i.e. admits) mistakes, fear to communicate failure, poor team conversation. In order to be a good agile team player a person should expose himself to his weakness, be open-minded and listen, listen, listen!

Focus

Focus is essential, Alistair talks more about having a priories list of tasks to do rather than anything else, I would add that techniques such as the pomodoro tecnique can improve the concentration of the team. Other basic rules are listed by this nice post from Matt Raible, that I often read to check if I’m really happy at work :-)

two-hour time window during which interruptions are blocked: meetings, phone calls, and demos are not allowed

Francesco Cirillo would say, try to do at least four pomodoros a day!

Conclusions

Ron Jeffries once characterized Crystal Clear as, “Bring a few developers together in peace, love and harmony, shipping code every other month, and good software will emerge.

I agree, I would add that Crystal gives some hints on how to maximise the happiness and productivity of the team that other methodologies don’t discuss at all, in the end the best thing you can do is mix something from Crystal with XP & Scrum to obtain the best results.