[vannevar]

Shipping dates are therefore always met according to Scrum: just stop developing at the deadline and release the product in whatever state it was in at the end of the last Sprint.

The author perpetuates the myth that scrum is incompatible with businesses that have hard real-world deadlines. This is not true. Nothing in scrum requires you to blindly plow forward working through an un-altered backlog one week at a time until you either miss a big deadline or release a half-baked product. All scrum requires is that when adjustments are made (like cutting features in the face of an upcoming deadline), they are made according to an orderly process of prioritization that occurs during sprint planning and while grooming the backlog.

What agile buys you is early warning when inconsistent objectives emerge, so you can make adjustments well in advance instead of in a last-minute panic right before the deadline. Sprint-by-sprint demos ensure that you really know where you stand versus your backlog and roadmap. No more, "I think we're about 20% done with that".