There was much to celebrate as an American last Tuesday. The President’s speech took me back to core values and principles. This quote struck me hard as we work through this recession.

“Those ideals still light the world, and we will not give them up for expedience’s sake.”

In the flurry to find ways to take cost out of the business quickly, it is very easy to get carried away and have everyone run to the cost-cutting side of the boat.  There are two things to watch out for as your company’s suggestion box fills-up:

  1. Selecting quick fixes without an eye for the long-term implications or unintended consequences
  2. Letting your goals or values drift in the short-term at the expense of true on-going success
hbr

Cover of HBR Article on Core Values

If you enjoy the writings of Jim Collins, like this Harvard Business Review classic , you believe that only with the guidance of core values and principles can you make the tough decisions needed to steer through this rough time.

Again, from the new President’s inauguration address:

“Our challenges may be new, the instruments with which we meet them may be new, but those values upon which our success depends, honesty and hard work, courage and fair play, tolerance and curiosity, loyalty and patriotism — these things are old.”

For many software-driven organizations, I believe Agile development is the “new instrument” to meet these new challenges.  Now for the good news – since core values are “forever,” these certainly do not need to change with even the largest scale Agile adoption across the software development lifecycle.

So, as we explore the notion of cutting costs through Agile adoption, let’s start with a frame of core values. Rally’s core values are captured on our backgrounder for hiring new employees.

Where are your company’s core values? How can you leverage them to adopt Agile in this historic time?

Further Reading:

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