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we must prioritize the impediments, and keep removing or reducing the top one until velocity is doubled

Hint: We might want to prioritize the impediments by how much the removal/reduction will increase velocity. 25% here, 30% there; pretty soon you're talking a real increase in velocity.

Hint: Improving quality and reducing technical debt are almost always important keys to seriously increased velocity. Not the only keys, but very important.

Velocity is best used for long term planning. I can look at my velocity over several iterations and come up with an average (Preferably a range.) Then I can use that information to say things like: 1) Given the current backlog, how many iterations is it likely to take to complete a given set of stories? 2) How many story points, and by extension what set of prioritized stories, can I deliver by date X (e.g. in time for the trade show?)

I am very wary of anyone who suggests increasing velocity is a goal. *They are just estimates*. It is so easy to game. I've seen it happen both consciously and subconsciously with very undesirable effects.

The only measure of increased productivity is completed work. Measuring this also has the desirable side effect of encouraging people to break work down into the smallest possible deliverable units.

It's like traditional velocity, except it's based on your customers' estimates of value rather than your programmers' estimates of cost.

Although value velocity isn't perfect, a team with consistent value estimates would be able to graph their value velocity over time and see how their productivity changes. This would allow them to experiment with new techniques ("Let's switch pairs every 90 minutes! Now once a week!") and see how they affect productivity. If balanced with actual measures of value and some sort of defect counting, this could be a powerful tool.

stories don't always have value on their own.

just estimate and score features rather than stories.

Another option would be to pro-rate each feature's estimate across all of the stories required to deliver it.

some types of stories don't provide value in the traditional way. What's the value of fixing a nasty crash bug?

Third, value velocity is just as vulnerable to gaming as cost velocity is... perhaps more so. I'm not sure how to prevent this.

Facilitate the Product Owner's role (backlog maintenance and meetings)

Among the Project Manager's responsibilities:

Tracking project risk

The Project Manager on a Scrum project has to be a Scrum expert and evangelist.

As each Scrum team on the project evolves their practices, the Project Manager will insure that they are continuing to work effectively with the other teams

One example of this would be the application of Test Driven Development and similar practices to build stability. It doesn't make sense for some teams to use TDD while others don't. The PM would have to step in and work with all the teams to insure that practices won't interfere or cancel each other out.

f they don’t see a meaningful update from us, at least once a quarter, we’re going to get kicked out of the game.  We’ve all acknowledged that as we’ve gotten bigger, our processes have become more cumbersome and now is the time to do something about it.  Agile will give us the ability to regain that rapid pace of delivering innovations to market that we were know for in our early days.”

We’ve been losing market share

If you can refer to a specific business issue and show the linkage, you are much more likely to get a receptive audience.  Here’s an example.

The focus isn’t on Agile, its on business, as it should be.

Use Focused Messages for Key Individuals or Groups

certain volume of people who are enrolled in the idea of Agile before you’ll see adoption start to accelerate,

People have specific needs in their role and they want to understand how Agile will affect and benefit them directly.  

Developers, on the other hand, probably wants to know if they will have interesting work, the opportunity to learn new things and the ability to make an impact on the company’s products.

a QA manager is probably interested in hearing how Agile helps enrich the QA profession.

The CFO, developer and QA manager have different roles in the organization and their needs are different.  If you want to enlist their support, be sure you know who you are talking to and what they value.

The easiest way to find out what interests someone is to ask them.  When you meet, leave plenty of time for talk.  Motoring through a well-rehearsed Agile presentation usually doesn’t work.  A lot of times I’ll have slides with me, but they are a backdrop for the conversation.  I’ll refer to slides when it helps move the conversation along, but otherwise don’t use them.  You might want to forget slides altogether and just draw things on a whiteboard as necessary.  This technique is particularly useful with an individual or a small group.  

Take it One Step Further: Collect Data to Gain Insight

you’ll be most effective tailoring your message if you invest some time conducting data through a series of structured interviews. 

First, you’ll need a small set of questions prepared for the interviews.  Here are some examples. What is working with our current methodology? What’s not working with our current methodology? How do you think Agile would help our organization? What concerns do you have about Agile?

Interview a wide range of people: developers, testers, business analysts, managers, product managers, senior management, project managers and someone from finance. 

When you conduct the interviews, it is good to have one interviewer who has the primary responsibility for talking and the other person who has the primary job of taking notes.  You can switch off roles each interview so no one person gets stuck in either role.  Here’s how I typically start off.  

stories that people tell about the organization and make sure you write them down

I put all of the information we’d gathered into a mind-mapping program (Mindjet) and grouped like things together.

Make sure you keep interesting stories intact.  Specifics will help you make your cases

When there’s numerical data, people engage with a presentation in an entirely different way than they do when there are stories.  I find stories more effective, but do what works for you.

As an Agile evangelist, you job is to get Agile deployed effectively.  Along the way there are many people will be willing to go out of their way to help if you effectively speak to their interests and concerns.