Geoffrey Moore in "Crossing the Chasm" talks about an “elevator pitch” for what you are selling. The idea is that you get in the elevator with the CEO of the company and you have the length of that trip in the elevator to explain to him / her what you are doing and why it is important. A classic elevator pitch has the following components:

• Your target audience
• The market alternative
• The new category that your idea/product fills
• What problem solving capability this new thing provides
• An alternative that is in the target audiences mind, and
• The key product features

I won't stick strictly to this format but I will try to capture most of these ideas. There are a number of these pitches out there. I think there are differences based on the kind of people you are working with so here is a version that reflects my contacts.

Ability to deal with change, allow us to make decisions earlier to address issues Reduction in risk on complex projects Improve quality Improve morale

By far the biggest problem recorded by organization attempting to become more agile is the problem of changing the culture from a traditional “waterfall” oriented shop to one focussed on an agile approach. This is because, more than anything else, a move to agile represents a different way of thinking about how to be successful with software development projects.

More information can be found at What Are The Changes in Culture That Need To Happen with Agile?

Did a bit of research on this and here are some ideas that I came across that I liked:

Ken Schwaber, co-inventor of Scrum: “We'll help you fail in half the time!” (note: have to love this one, even if it is a little cryptic).

Bob Schatz of Agile Infusion: “Scrum is a pattern of practice that helps product developers break complex problems into smaller pieces and then work collaboratively with users to create better solutions.”

Steve Berczuk: “For organizations who are dissatisfied with the overhead and lack of flexibility of conventional software development methods, Agile Software Development is a software development process. Unlike traditional chaotic or document-heavy approaches, Agile Software Development is a lightweight, yet highly disciplined approach that delivers end to end value in frequent iterations, where the stakeholders can re-evaluate priorities based on the state of the application and current market needs at the end of an iteration.”

Subashish Bose: “Scrum is a way to ship products frequently. The most valuable part goes first, so you get the best returns. Quality is never compromised, so you get the best stuff in best quality. That way you get rapid ROI, as well as you can even change your plans based on customer behavior. Change is very easy. It's based on empirical methods and uses feedback loops and continuous learning. So you get to know the most reliable forecasts. Team and people are the focus, so they end up being happy and proud. We moved from waterfall to Scrum for a telecom solutions company and started shipping every four months instead of previous 2 years. We prioritized and shipped the most valuable part first to get the best ROI. It's highly empirical with feedback and learning, so we were pretty sure of where we are going. Guys loved that.”

Brad Appleton: “Agility is all about harnessing the power of collaborative people and frequent delivery to: learn & adapt to change, minimize risk & cycle-time, and maximize returns & customer-value in a volatile global marketplace.”