I like your point about the idealists. IMHO, agile has some merits, rooted in psychology. For example, during stand up to say what your plans are for the day. Same for the sprint and quarter. It helps with communication. I don’t like the thing where everything needs to be a deliverable thing. I’ll poke my eyes out if I need to sit through another example of building a skateboard, scooter, bike, truck. Try that example with something real like a bridge or house. It ends up in a lot of throwaway work. Now try doing that in a highly regulated field like government or finance where you really can’t iterate due to oversight and regulatory compliance.

Oops, this turned into a rant. Well at least agile pays the bills. There’s a lot of money to be made in prolonging the problem.