“Where to Turn in a Downturn Economy?”
Jean has a nice post in the Agile Blog on team dysfunctions and Agile. Her recommendation on the subject is crisp:
If you are looking to Agile and how it can cut costs for your organization, consider the power of your teams. Work to engender trust and promote an ability to have constructive conflict. Empower your teams and amplify the learning that teams bring to organizations.
I will allow myself to go one more step. IMHO Agile exposes team dysfunctions and organizational pathologies. This is the reason Agile is so powerful on the one hand, and why it might meet strong resistance on the other.
The Agile Executive 
Israel,
You are absolutely right. I believe that one of the beauties of the Agile approach is that it aggressively uncovers team dysfunctions. At least when properly adopted. And that is the first step in any program, 12 steps or otherwise :- ) Accepting that you have a problem.
Jean Tabaka
February 24, 2009 at 7:26 pm
It is a bit of a Catch-22, Jean. IMHO various execs turn to Agile because they are not satisfied with various aspects of their software development. The dissatisfaction is about symptoms, e.g. poor quality, rather than the core problem(s) underneath the symptoms. When Agile uncovers deeper dysfunction, the response sometime is “but Agile was supposed to be the fix….”
Israel Gat
February 25, 2009 at 7:19 am