It's the Software, Stupid!

The following is a quote from a blog post that made my day. The basic message is that agile development requires top-notch developers who use the best engineering practices known to make it work.

James Shore in It's the Software, Stupid!:
It's time we brought back the early emphasis on great engineering practices. If you're using Scrum or another agile method that doesn't include engineering practices, realize that your method is incomplete. Scrum, for example, intentionally creates an environment in which your team is expected to self-organize and define its own practices. If you aren't doing that--if you aren't talking about engineering practices, what's working, what's not, and how to improve--you're going to run into trouble someday. Probably someday soon.

And he goes on to say:

It doesn't really matter where you get your agile engineering practices from, though. (XP does provide a nice, clearly-defined bundle that's a good starting point, plug, plug.). Whatever you do, don't forget that agile development requires agile engineering. It's not enough to stand around and talk about your iteration plans. You have to code.

And if you're going to code, why not create amazing code, code that's endlessly malleable, a joy to adapt and modify?