Crystal method is an agile software development approach that focuses primarily on people and their interactions when working on a project rather than on processes and tools. Alistair believed that people’s skills and talents as well as the way they communicate has the biggest impact on the outcome of the project.
Crystal Method is based on two fundamental assumptions:
- Teams can streamline their processes as their work and become a more optimized team
- Projects are unique and dynamic and require specific methods
According to Cockburn, we should view product development as a game that should stimulate everyone to interact, become creative, and produce brilliant ideas. He says that instead of focusing on questions like “is our model accurate?” we should be looking for answers to questions like “Is our product meeting the customer’s needs? Or “Do we have our goals aligned as a team?”