Firms exist for different reasons, from short-term enrichment of owners and shareholders to fulfilling a long-term purpose. According to Jim Collins “Great Companies” have a long-term purpose their leaders are passionate about. For long-term sustainable growth to achieve a larger purpose then short-term profits it takes a certain type of leadership. Great leaders build an agile business, but realize agility is not embedded in a business model, software, or clever manipulation of the global footprint. Long-term sustainable growth comes from leaders who are committed to the vision and develop people who can innovate as a way to adapt to the rocky waters of the environment. Leaders at all levels understand the environment and their business and become coaches of continuous improvement constantly developing people to identify the next goal needed to advance, innovate their way toward that goal, and learn, learn, learn.
Extreme Programming with its provocative name, got people’s attention in 1999. It is based on sound technical practices. Why do so few agile teams employ engineering practices that support the tight iterative cycles of Agile and Scrum? The creators of Scrum expected the continuous improvement cycle to pull engineering practices into teams once the cycle revealed the problems of poor product quality, hard to change code, wasted time debugging, long stabilization efforts and the ever growing burden of manual test. This talk will cut through the mystery and show why we should all strive for Technical Excellence.
