Crystal Clear: the book

About five years ago, Alistair Cockburn wrote a book, "Crystal Clear: A human powered methodology for small teams", that is still a pretty good read today for those getting started in agile methods but concerned for the people aspect.  Cockburn is probably one of the foremost thought leaders in the agile community about the ability of developers, testers--indeed, the whole team--to respond predictably and consistently, whether agile or not.

Of course, one of my favorite papers by Cockburn about the vagaries of human performance, and especially when embedded on an agile team, is this one on the non-linear characteristics of people.  I think you'll find this one a good read as well; and some provocative ideas to ponder.

Cockburn has given some serious thought to scaling the methodology.  Agile is best suited for small teams that do not have mission-critical requirements.  "Clear" is his "one small team" method.  Crystal Orange, described in another book, is "Clear" scaled up a bit.

If you're interested in "Clear", here's a nice summary book report by Donna Davis that gives you a pretty good idea of what you are going to find in the book.

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Project Management the Agile Way

It's almost here! "It" is my new book, "Project Management the Agile Way...Makng it work in the enterprise", most likely in Amazon by January 2010 if everything continues on the path with the publisher-Gods.

In this book, I expound on my top-five for agile, and actually blow it out to 12 major themes, from a quick overview of 4 agile methodologies, through a business case, test strategy, and eventually ending with benefit capture.

You know, on this last point, the NPV of the typical agile project is better than the traditional plan-driven methodology, at least for a few periods where the early deliveries start earning benefits early.

If you work in a business environment where the executives need to be persuaded to do projects, and a business case becomes a contract for performance, this may be the book for you. This is about agile in a business situation where projects may not be a core competency, but simply a means to an end.

I hope you enjoy the read as much as enjoyed the write!

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The People Puzzle: non linear devices!

One of the most prolific writers in the agile space of thought provoking ideas, and author of one my favorite articles is Alistair Cockburn, the inventor of the Crystal family of agile methods.

[Some of these links are a little slow to load, so patience is advised]

One of Cockburn's favorite subjects, at least measured by his passion, is people, and a worthy note he wrote is entitled  "Characterizing People as Non-linear, First Order Components in Software Development.

In this paper, Cockburn's premise is that people are 'active devices' in software development, and like all active devices, there are success and failure modes, primarily these four:

1. People are communicating beings, doing best face-to-face, in person, with real-time question and answer.
2. People have trouble acting consistently over time.
3. People are highly variable, varying from day to day and place to place.
4. People generally want to be good citizens, are good at looking around, taking initiative, and doing “whatever is needed” to get the project to work.

He also suggests that people have these general characteristics:

• People need both think time and communicating opportunities 
• People work well from examples 
• People prefer to fail conservatively than to risk succeeding differently; prefer to invent than to research, can only keep a small amount in their heads, and do make mistakes, and find it hard to change their habits.
• Individual personalities easily dominate a project.
• A person’s personality profile strongly affects their ability to perform specific assignmen

There's actually a lot more in the paper that makes for thoughtful reading.

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What is this thing called Agile?

I've been working on a book about agile project management for enterprise projects. My publisher just gave me a title! "Project Management the Agile Way -- Making It Work in the Enterprise". Look for it in January, 2010.

Until then, the article below is a petty good introduction to some of the top-level ideas. You can down load "What is this Thing Called Agile" from my library at slideshare.com

There are some other materials there you may find interesting. Let me know!

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