I agree that more thought may be required. But that has nothing to do with Agile. If anything Agile should be commended for bringing the problems into focus.
The problem is that Agile approaches are perceived and promoted as a solution for these kind of problems. And I don't see well known Agile consultants do anything to change this view. That's why I wrote this.
That isn't an Agile problem, except to the extent that Agile is the flavor of the moment. It's a problem with the industry. And really, with people in general.
Many people want to buy magic beans. Some people will sell magic beans, either because they are cynical jerks (which is rare) or because they don't understand beans all that well (which is common). That doesn't make beans bad.
If you picked on the people or the culture making these claims it would make more sense to me. You spend time explaining why Agile can't solve a problem no methodology could solve, which seems rather pointless.
It's an odd thing to witness; when management finds a new cure-all for their software development and IT management woes (in my place, these concepts have been extended to DBA's, BA's, Cognos jockeys, etc), as there is an almost childlike enthusiasm and loyalty to this new silver bullet concept.
I feel like the rift occurs right about here, and the blinders go on for the suits while developers and other plebes shake their heads in disgust, as another wave of "paradigm shifting management strategies" sweep their inboxes with mandatory training meetings and promotional material from Gartner and the likes.
The biggest issue is that we all want the same thing: Good Software Development, but the business environment seems to hammer technical workers with the same insanity wrapped in a new packaging, sold down the line from some haughty focus group that contracted an outside company for a $100k "Agile training package".
The only place I've ever managed to get past all of this cruft is when freelancing with a small team directly with a client; this has never happened at my day job.
Never do we worry about specific methodologies, just three people coding and skype / irc / email with clients. Treat people like humans, and learn to say no when appropriate. Good software development is just organized, civil cooperation.
The problem with that is not much unlike waterfall, it provides little to no transparencyfor the employing party, very little accountability and almost no meaningful measureability.
This is why the majority of start ups fail. Developers have a ridgid vision of product, and then they spend 6/7 months building that product and then at the end you find out no one actually wants that product. Even though the product is good, its just solves a problem no ones interested in.
You need have system to actually work discover if you are creating value. You need something to hold yourself accountable.
In reality most successful start ups have a phase of constant learning, just to discover who are their customers, and what they place value on. And they normally have various metrics to hold themselves accountable.
The best way I have encountered is agile development with experiments to find out what customers actually need. Then metrics to see how people react to changes. If your vision isn't going anywhere, then you need a fundamental rethink which again needs to be tested.