Today’s Baseball Today show (which I don’t have to miss due to the joys of podcasting) had 3 segments, and provided three different quotes that stuck out.

The first was in reference to a pitcher that is having some control issues with his pitches:

The wrong pitch thrown with conviction is always better than the right pitch thrown half heartedly.

Commit. And then do your best. You are going to get knocked around some days (iterations), but don’t just shrug your shoulders and ‘sorta’ do something.

The next one was in the context of a player who has had a couple injuries and has in the past played through them.

The role of the Manager and medical staff is to protect the player from himself.

Now, switch a couple words, primarily Manager with Scrum Master (or perhaps even better Coach) and player with team. Suddenly it directly relates to software development.

The last quote was from an interview between an Uncle who is a pitching coach with the Angels, and his nephew who is a reliever for the Jays. Says the Uncle:

The difference between AAA and the Big Leagues is being consistency.

Now lets play the word switcheroo game again. Agile for AAA and High Functioning Agile for Big Leagues. One thing I have heard repeatedly the last little bit is that Agile is all about discipline and consistency. Without that you lose the advantage of comparing between iterations for things like velocity and accuracy of estimations.