Agile is a great idea
but, a lot of organisations only pay it the barest of lip service in order to attract candidates as potential recruits.
I have worked in a number of places now who have attempted Agile in different ways. I think the best approach I encountered was where the organisation chose to adopt a best of breed method, taking the bits of Agile, Lean and XP that worked for them - and it did.
Recently, I have worked with an organisation where hiring managers were instructed by their peers to make a big play for Agile, but at the same time reinforced that software development would continue to be a bespoke waterfall methodology because "it works". We ended up with a lot of talented developers and analysts who had been working under Agile for a few years all of a sudden stuck in a prehistoric waterfall environment.
In my experience, when organisations want to use Agile purposefully, it works. When they just want to pretend they are doing it, then it doesnt. It amuses me that when organisations have their software being developed in a waterfall methodology complain that the brand new Agile tools they have just bought dont work the way they want them to.
I am a big fan of Agile and always try to introduce elements of it where ever possible.
As an aside, I used to consult for a startup whos director complained that unit testing was pointless. To quote him; "Why should I write a test, then write the code to fail the test before I start development?". Hmm, I wonder.
That company didnt progress from being a start up,