# Alistair Cockburn Alistair Cockburn (pronounced CO-burn) is an American computer scientist and one of the original signatories of the [[Agile Manifesto]]. He created the Crystal family of methodologies and later distilled agile into the "Heart of Agile" framework. His PhD thesis at University of Oslo (2003) was "People and Methodologies in Software Development"; reflecting his focus on human factors over prescriptive processes. ## Key Contributions - **Crystal Methodologies**: Lightweight approaches color-coded by project complexity (Crystal Clear for small teams to Crystal Diamond for life-critical systems) - **[[Agile Manifesto]]**: Co-author of the founding document (2001) - **Heart of Agile** (2015): Distilled agile to four imperatives; Collaborate, Deliver, Reflect, Improve - **Use Cases**: Wrote influential book on writing effective use cases ## References - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alistair_Cockburn - https://alistaircockburn.com ## Related - [[Agile Manifesto]] - [[Kent Beck]] - [[Ward Cunningham]] - [[Robert C. Martin]] - [[Extreme Programming (XP)]] ## Quotes <!-- QueryToSerialize: LIST FROM #type/quote AND [[Alistair Cockburn]] WHERE public_note = true SORT file.name ASC --> ## Books <!-- QueryToSerialize: LIST FROM #books AND [[Alistair Cockburn]] WHERE public_note = true SORT file.name ASC -->