While continuing to grow, the state of agile adoption seems to be plucked straight out of an Ayn Rand novel, where the acceptance of mediocrity has infected the masses like a plague. Half-hearted adoptions have led to half-hearted results (as in "we suck less") that in turn are leaving these organizations straddling a tipping point from which they more often than not slide backwards, rather than making the push over the top to high performance and exponential growth in ROI.

Bob speaks with Emily and Geoff Bache at the Agile 2008 conference.

Introducing Scrum can be fun, but can also be quite a challenge. There are numerous hurdles to overcome, new practices to master and problems to solve. In this article, we will present some of the mistakes we have seen made, or made ourselves when introducing Scrum at various companies. In this last article, we'll discuss the meta-ScrumMaster role, cowboy behavior, and why agile is not easy.

Ask any Scrum trainer and they'll tell you the same thing: Adopting Scrum is hard. There are many reasons for this. Chief among them is that Scrum is so dramatically different—in terms of practices and principles—from traditional project management paradigms that it requires team members to truly reorient their attitudes and working behaviors. One common way to initiate a Scrum transformation is through a pilot project. But even then, how does a team that's never used Scrum before tell if a project is a strong candidate for a successful pilot?