compileTemplate, and getTemplate are hook methods to be redefined by the extended class. The main idea is to hide the specifics on how to fetch a template (from a JST object, from a <script> tag, using ajax, etc), and how to compile it. So the initialization methods would do something like:
```javascript
var template = this.getTemplate(this.options.template);
this.compiledTemplate = this.getCompiledTemplate(template);
```