Can Project Challenges Be Met Through Agility?

This weekend I am attending AgileCoachCamp. The event kicks off with "Lightning Talks." The purpose of these to give some insight in to the position paper we each submitted. These short (1-3 minute) talks are supposed to be informal and fun.

So what do I want to talk about? I had submitted a position paper but on the flight out to the event I was thinking about what I wanted to talk about in my Lightning Talk and concluded that I might as well publish the threads of the talk here. You never know it might create some further discussion. so here goes....

The reason for tapping the collective wisdom of those attending AgileCoachCamp is that the challenge I am facing is at the center of five converging (colliding?) paths:

1. A major business transformation that must be achieved in an accelerated time frame
2. A switch away from in-house development to using third party packages and partners
3. Business and Technical staff familiar with Waterfall-style structured development process
4. A traditional technology organization being challenged to change but somewhat resistant
5. An organization that is slow to adopt new technologies

Since much of the changing systems environment will be accomplished through third party service providers and package solutions the in-house development will primarily be integration work.

My interest therefore lies in four areas:

• Agile Planning and estimating
• Adapting agile techniques to a Delivery oriented environment
• Injecting Agile approaches in to a complex project
• Technology to support Agile for distributed teams (Wikis, IM, Video, etc.)

I have some ideas of my own but I am really looking for input from people who have had experience in similar situations. What worked? What didn't work and why? How to start off? How to make these changes less threatening?

If you have comments you can add them below. I am always interested to hear about other people's experiences.