Taking Agile to Operations

I see Agile as a philosophy of teamwork especially suited to groups tasked
with creating something unique.  Agile promises that we can actually get
a product delivered from of these smart, creative people in whom the
business has invested.  Maximizing ROI on salaries has been the holy
grail of managing knowledge workers for decades, and Agile promises a way to do just
that.

Now that we know can more easily make things using Agile techniques, can we apply what
we have learned to other types of work?  After all, in most enterprise environments
we don’t just make software, we also maintain the systems that we build.  For
example, that marketing campaign system that just won’t go away, or the Yet Another
CRM.  Heck, even MS Exchange needs to be maintained.

So, when we need to apply our talents to operational problems (Exchange is down. 
Again.) what learnings from Agile can we use?   I have seen Scrum used effectively
for short term firefighting teams.  That’s easy. 

I fail to see how Agile techniques truly help manage operational teams. 
Got any stories?  Email them to me.