Crystal | Do You Know the Seven Characteristics of the Crystal Method?

In the late 1990s, Alistair Cockburn proposed the crystal methodology.

Since the Agile Manifesto was put forward in 2001, a series of agile methods led by extreme programming has gradually come into public view, including the Crystal Method. In the subsequent development, various agile methods are biased and progressively form their characteristics and principles.

• Extreme Programming (XP) focuses on customers' changing needs and emphasizes teamwork. XP pays more attention to the development process, and the team (including customers, managers, and developers) gathers together to discuss solutions and solve problems.
• Scrum's development model is called the "rugby" approach: Team members retain their views on the entire product development process and achieve autonomy. The way of product development has changed from linear method to integrated method, which stimulates cross-learning, communication, and thinking divergence at all levels within the team.
• Function-Driven Development Mode (FDD) is mainly aimed at small and medium-sized software development projects. "It is an architecture-centered development process with a short iteration period and target driven. It first builds an overall model of the whole project and then completes the project development through a biweekly 'design function —— implementation' iteration."

Crystal - Crystal Methodology is a series of agile methods established by Alistair Cockburn and Jim Highsmith. Alistair Cockburn refines the crystal methodology into Crystal Clear, Crystal Yellow, Crystal Orange, and Crystal Red. These crystal methodologies are divided according to the importance of the project and the size of the participants.

Generally speaking, the Crystal Clear method is suitable for a small team to carry out agile development, and the number of people is less than 6. Compared to XP, which is also applicable to small groups, the crystal method is less disciplined, but its management operations are coordinated with the group output.

Crystal Methods have Seven System Characteristics：

1. Regular Delivery：

Agile methods have high requirements for deliverables and pay attention to frequent small batch delivery, and the crystal method is no exception. We can improve customer value and maximize product value through regular delivery and timely feedback from customers and product managers.

2. Reflection and Improvement：

The team should timely reflect on the problems encountered during the iterative development process and those found in the deliverables. Grasp the key to the problem and find a solution quickly. When issues are not found in time or the team does not reflect on the improvements, they will often lead to the superposition of problems and ultimately affect the delivery of available products.

3. Osmotic Communication：

When two or more members communicate, other people in the same space with them will more or less obtain their dialogue information. Therefore, this way of receiving information sources that are not intentionally created is called infiltration communication. Members can choose to ignore or receive according to their current work.

4. Personal Safety：

Personal safety is similar to the "courage" emphasized by extreme programming. When individuals have problems and are confused, they choose to point out the issues rather than hide them, and their safety is guaranteed. First of all, only by facing the shortcomings can we correct them in time and promote our improvement and our team. Secondly, personal safety is the expression of mutual trust in the group. Only mutual trust can better complete the group's cooperation.

5. Focal Point：

The focal point is the primary plan. The team develops a plan to accomplish it and then schedules it.

"Focal point" is to determine what to do first and then arrange a time to work with peace of mind. Team members need to clearly understand their own most important tasks and make sure they have enough time to complete them.

6. Establish convenient contact with experts and users：

Establishing convenient connections ensures that experts, users, and teams can form a short-cycle reaction chain. Establishing a rapid feedback mechanism for small batches of deliverables and changes in user needs can improve the team's efficiency.

7. Technical environment for testing, management, and integration:

• Automatic testing can automatically test the code, reduce the labor cost and make the work efficient and fast;
• In short, configuration management can return to the previous step and solve the problem by canceling the errors in the new operation;
• Frequent integration enables the team to integrate the system quickly and timely to detect and correct errors.

The crystal method ensures the progress of product development, better meets customers' needs, and smoothly implements the development process. However, in product development, we can't use a single agile method. We should learn in various ways according to the specific situation of the project, learn from each other's strengths and complement each other's weaknesses, and form new agile thinking.