The Agile Manifesto and Scrum have many things in common and I would like to focus on one of them for a minute, this is the idea of craftsmanship at speed. Craftsmanship is something that has been lost for any organization who does not value competence over cost. It is shortsighted to think that just good enough is good enough for the future, just good enough to get by now will cause nothing but problems in the future, this is disposable code, this is desolate design, this is quantity over quality.

To truly follow the Agile principals and to truly follow Scrum requires a team to reach for excellence in everything they do from design through development and delivery. This enables agility, this ensures the future is not full of bug fixes, this meets or exceeds expectations. If you truly want all the benefits possible you need to enable creativity and you do this by encouraging craftsmanship at every level.

The speed part means delivering early and often, getting feedback and learning from it in iterative and incremental units. Speed cannot sacrifice quality else you will lose whatever you have gained down the line. True speed is only possible with craftsmanship, true speed is sustainable and suitable to the product being crafted and some things should never be rushed to save time now, they should take time now in order to save time later.

Craftsmanship at speed is hard, especially difficult if your organizational culture does not support it. It is truly a revolutionary act in such a situation to insist on it. Once you do Agile is yours.