The Laws of Software Process

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The Advent of Agile

gives visibility into the same thing (the gemstone), but for which each view

is different.

In his highly engaging book, Agile Software Development,* Alistair Cock-

burn describes several flavors of Crystal. The approach can be modified by

making the methodology “heavier” (higher intrinsic coordination, work

product definition, supplementary documentation, and the other artifacts

of defined methodologies). This is labeled by changing the “color” of the

crystal. Crystal Clear is lighter than Crystal Orange, etc. The “darker” the

color of the Crystal method used, the more expected and necessary

method overhead we would see. The other crystal metaphor used is “hard-

ness.” “Harder” crystal levels connote systems whose intrinsic risk and ...