"A key principle of Scrum is its recognition that during a project the customers can change their minds about what they want and need (often called requirements churn), and that unpredicted challenges cannot be easily addressed in a traditional predictive or planned manner. As such, Scrum adopts an empirical approach—accepting that the problem cannot be fully understood or defined, focusing instead on maximizing the team’s ability to deliver quickly and respond to emerging requirements."

I have been working in a SCRUM environment, with 4-6 week cycles, for about 6 months now and have been very pleased with the impact that it has had on my life (regular work hours, seeing my family, etc).  But was looking up the criteria for a 'Certified Scrum Master' and came across the SCRUM definition on Wikipedia, and started reading the actual definition.  My first thought was "hey, this development methodology actually allows you to deal with what happens in the real world (i.e. customers changing requirements); but is this "selling out" on solid requirements?

I understand that this works in the environment that I am currently working in, where there are deep pockets paying the bills, and also making the descisions on what requirements to change / impliment; but is this a recepie for success in smaller or simply more budget concious environments?  Having the ability to be completely flexible when the client wants the product changed.   The more I think about it, the more I feel that SCRUM development may be better suited for an environment where a team is taking over a project from another team (bringing some outside development in-house or something of that ilk), as opposed to ground up development.

What do you think?