The Athletic Standards
Following the Athletic Standards is somewhat extreme, or else they wouldn’t be ‘Athletic’.
Athletic Development comes with a set of high-standard principles.
These are the seven Athletic Standards:
The value of a co-located team is greater than the effort to co-locate. No one works on anything alone. We don’t divide and assign tasks by skill set. We continuously invest in developing our skills through collaborative practice. We build together, we learn together. We help each other along the way. When challenged, we recover fast together. This is how we continuously improve reduce dependencies, increase transparency, and ensure quality.
Our plan changes daily. We continuously collect new insights. We inspect and adapt. We demonstrate results daily and process feedback instantly. This way, we are always aligned and up to speed, as best we can.
We serve small increments of quality. Daily we collect insights on what we serve from whom it is served to. We involve anyone who can provide valuable insights and work with them continuously to improve. We avoid proxies between us, the value creator, and those whom we service (the value consumer).
What we deliver, is a representation of who we are as professionals. We don’t make concessions. We make it work, the way it should work. For time spent developing something new, time is spent improving something existing. It is done, when it is done. We don’t track time, we earn trust by delivering great results. If time is a constraint, we will align on what can be done without compromising quality or value.
We uphold our principles. We dare to motivate each other to deliver sustainable value at high quality. We are honest about our abilities. We dare to say “no” to requests that are not valuable or viable. We take the time to learn, so we can do more tomorrow than we can today. We strive to exceed expectations, especially our own.
The whole team takes collective ownership over all the steps it decides to take. Although we keep our skills and talent, we are in it together. Every member represents the team and reports to the team! The team is a coalition that reports only to itself. — There can be no hierarchy within the team. There can be no sub-teams. — There can be no client/vendor relationship within a coalition. These should be made obsolete during its formation. Everyone shares responsibility for getting the best result.
No one is to personally take credit for achievements, or be blamed for mistakes; it would be disrespectful to do so. We value mistakes. We learn from them. We celebrate success together. We respect open feedback and input.
