[exelius]

I disagree. The "companies so technically incompetent they have to hire consultants" are the norm. Think Fortune 500 companies developing internal software tools here; a lot of these guys are still stuck in the "we release software every year and hope the requirements haven't changed" mindset. Meanwhile the "customer" expectations have changed: people expect faster releases because Google, Facebook, Netflix, etc. update their shit every month. The business environment changes quickly too; the old development ways just aren't fast enough to keep up.

Agile helps force groups like this, who have been doing things a certain way for a long time, to re-think how they manage requirements and release schedules. Most likely, the developers at the bottom level have been screaming about this for years, but middle management doesn't hear them because they're stuck in meetings all day having to explain why all their projects are over budget because change management costs are through the roof. Along comes Agile as a solution to all of this.

This isn't a technical problem, it's a management problem. So yeah, a lot of these companies hire consultants to come in and tell them how/what to do because consultants have no skin in the game and aren't involved in the typical petty management squabbles.