Having worked for a consultancy for a number of years, primarily working for tier one investment banks, I read The Sunday Times (UK) business section this weekend with interest - specifically with regards to the article titled "Sport shows business how to win".  Sir Clive Woodward is well known in UK sport for obvious reasons; however it appears now that businesses want to take advantage of his skills.  Management Futures has a top 10 Things Managers Can Learn from Clive Woodward.  Sir Clive has event published a book, Winning!, that is well read within business circles.  One word that comes up time and time again in the Sunday Times article is "passion".  The Agile Executive also appears to be powered by passion. 

I believe passion is important in a job, especially in the area of software development.  A team of passionate software engineers are a joy to work with, and will usually deliver a solution to solve the business problem.  However passion has to have direction, otherwise engineers end up playing with every cool new piece of technology they can get there hands on, but never actually delivering a solution.