The theme of the talk is the recently completed Crystal Clear methodology, the smallest member of the Crystal family. The entire Crystal family hangs on three practices: Frequent Delivery, Close Communication, and Reflective Improvement. Crystal Clear makes optimizations for small collocated teams, replacing Close Communications with Osmotic Communications.

In a deviation from the normal methodology description, rather than prescribe a set of procedures that, if followed, are supposed to lead to the achievement of success properties, Crystal Clear names the desired project properties directly and lets the team tune its own procedures to achieve them. On the negative side, this doesn't give starting teams so much guidance as to what those procedures might be, but on the positive side, it gives more experienced teams a lot of latitude in using their prior knowledge.It happens that these properties are common across projects of all sizes, but again, they are here optimized for small collocated teams. If you don't have a small collocated team, then it should be obvious to you that the procedures you follow will be slightly or very different.

This talk will be quite informal, allowing interruptions for question, answer and side digressions.

Dr. Alistair Cockburn is an internationally respected expert on project management, object-oriented design, use cases, and software development methodologies. The author of two Jolt Productivity award-winning books, Agile Software Development and Writing Effective Use Cases, as well as the perennial favorite, Surviving OO Projects, he was one of the authors of the Agile Development Manifesto. Dr. Cockburn defined an early agile methodology for the IBM Consulting Group in 1992, served as special advisor to the Central Bank of Norway in 1998, and has worked in companies from Scandinavia to South Africa, North America to China. Internationally, he is known for his seminal work on methodologies and use cases, as well as his lively presentations and interactive workshops. Many of his materials are available online at http://alistair.cockburn.us . He can be reached at acockburn@aol.com. His current work centers around advanced project management strategies.