AGILE METHODOLOGIES

Agile methodologies are especially aimed at small projects, because they constitute a tailor-made solution, with a high level of simplification that allows the main practices to be maintained to ensure product quality.

Currently, for many development teams the use of traditional methodologies is very complex in their current way of working considering the difficulties of introduction and investment associated with training and use of tools. On the other hand, the characteristics of the projects for which the agile methodologies have been specially thought are adjusted to a wide range of software development projects; those in which the development teams are small, with reduced terms, volatile requirements, new technologies, etc.

There are many software development methodologies that focus on process control, establishing activities, artefacts, tools and notations.

For this opportunity only the following methodology is described: 

Crystal Methodologies

This is a set of methodologies for software development characterized by being focused on the people who make up the team and reducing to the maximum the number of devices produced. They have been developed by Alistair Cockburn.

Software development is considered a cooperative game of invention and communication, limited by the resources to be used. The development team is a key factor, so efforts must be invested in improving skills and abilities, as well as having teamwork policies.

It is based on the concepts of Rational Unified Process (RUP) and is composed by: Crystal Clear, Crystal Yellow, Crystal Orange and Crystal Red.

The level of color opacity in the name indicates a greater number of people involved in the development, a greater size of the project and, therefore, the need for greater control in the process.

Its principles indicate that:

• The team can reduce intermediate work as they produce code more frequently and use better channels of communication between people.

• Projects evolve differently over time so the conventions the team adopts need to be adapted and evolved.

There are two rules that apply to the entire Crystal family.

• The first indicates that the cycles where increments are created should not exceed four months.

• The second indicates that it is necessary to hold a reflection workshop after each delivery in order to fine-tune the methodology.

Characteristics

People, as active devices, have success modes and failure modes. The following are the main ones:

• As the number of people increases, so does the need to coordinate.

• When the damage potential increases, the tolerance to variations is affected.

• The sensitivity of the time that must be in the market varies, sometimes this time must be shortened to the maximum and defects are tolerated, others are emphasized in the audit, confiabilidad, legal protection, among others.

• People communicate better face to face, with the question and the answer in the same space of time.