[mindcrime]

And to really implement Scrum, you'd probably need to change more about the organization than the org was willing to change.

Bingo. That is the key point to me. Scrum, and other agile-family methodologies, are great when fully implemented. But what usually happens is that the higher-ups refuse to relinquish a bit of control, and stick tightly to their traditional command-and-control approach, and the dev teams are forced to do something that looks-kinda-like-scrum (or looks-kinda-like-XP or looks-kinda-like-AUP, etc.) while operating in a structure that isn't really compatible with the principles of Scrum, XP, AUP, etc.

Basically, we're forced to try and fit a round peg into a square hole because people higher up the org-chart either don't really understand agile-family methodologies or are actively opposed to truly implementing them.

[Cakez0r]

Nail, meet head. I've worked in places where scrum has worked great. But most places I've worked at or heard about have exactly the problems you describe.