AgileScout invited me to write a guest post on the use of Agile in the enterprise. Having worked and being involved in multiple projects of varying complexities, I found adopting Agile (specifically Scrum) was challenging in many ways for all but the simplest projects. Most challenges could be overcome by modifying the methodology or adopting alternatives such as Kanban or “Scrum-ban“, but this is a practice that usually raises eyebrows in the Scrum community.
There are three areas that are challenging for Agile in the enterprise:
1. Complex inter-dependencies between projects – a reality in any enterprise
2. Handling of Specialized and Global Project Resources such as expert architects in geographically distributed teams
3. Sprint Overhead caused by complex project tasks such as initial architecture design, that would typically not fit in any reasonable sprint duration.
Read the entire article here.
UPDATE 05/04/2011: Followup post on tips for adopting agile in the enterprise. Full article on AgileScout.
Musings of an Enterprise Software Technologist 
Thanks so much for sharing! We look forward to more of your work!!
AgileScout, it was my pleasure – thanks for the invite! I will try to address the possible solutions for each of the above challenges in future posts.