This is fair.

Furthermore, I think it's best to consider Agile in its proper historical perspective. When it first emerged, its principles -- as you've enumerated from the manifesto -- were uncommon enough to be novel and insightful. In this context, the Agile philosophy was a legitimate reaction to the problems of its day. Whether or not it's been an effective remedy to those problems is a matter of hotly contested argument. But one is, perhaps, inclined to be more charitable to Agile when fixing it into historical place.

In principle, I don't think it's fair to call Agile -- the core, original theory -- a "sham." Rather, the "sham" is all the rigidity, trappings, and liturgy that have grown up around Agile since it reached its saturation point. At some point, Agile started to ossify into a shadow-image of everything it was intended to fix. But I think that failing reflects the nature of its practitioners more than it does the core philosophy.

I haven't heard that argument before. Interesting.

For me, big-A Agile refers to the Agile Manifesto for Software Development, and is the Agile that people are talking about in posts like this. It may be a software development buzzword, and yes there are certifications and they are scams, but I find the values and principles in the Agile Manifesto to be fairly sound and relevant within the context they were first produced in, as basically a reaction to waterfall in larger companies developing business software with average developers.

Small a agile is an English word meaning quick or flexible or something.

I am not saying I am right and you are wrong, just that is how I have usually thought about it.

You can't "be" big-A Agile, it's a tool set or a check-list - but you can (and should what to) be small-a agile as a development organisation.

The reason I make the distinction is that big-A is the quantifiable bit, but you can tick all the boxes and still essentially do waterfall. Conversely, you can be small-a agile without ticking the boxes - agile isn't, and can't be, prescriptive.

If the team feels they don't need daily stand-ups, or if they want to sit down (the horror!), there is nothing about being agile that should keep them from doing that. Same goes for tests: You can worship the test coverage number obsessively, but if your assertions are pointless or missing, you won't reap the benefits. Conversely, an agile team can decide to forego tests if that's the right thing.