[_ea1k]

I disagree with your assertion that this is a "very abnormal situation". However, I think that I agree with your main assertion.

The improvement isn't really specific to bringing in Agile, but rather to giving the team a clear focus, and way to measure their improvement in deliverables. There are many ways to do that, it's just that Scrum happens to be a relatively straightforward and lightweight way to introduce that in a way that is compatible with many of these teams.

Unlike a lot of those bad approaches, though, I don't think Scrum is necessarily a hindrance to a properly functioning team. There are a lot of good ideas in Scrum that are designed to get obstacles out of the way, IMO.