Looking at the collection of things that people refer to as "Agile", some of the practices work for certain teams at certain times. Saying "its all a sham" is as much bullshit as calling Agile a silver bullet that will solve all your woes. (Just because it's not one extreme, doesn't put it at the other).
The OP calls out two practices, Scrum and TDD. I've tried "Scrum" at 3 different places, where by "Scrum" they meant "have a stand up meeting". Never worked. For that project!
However, TDD has actually been a silver bullet for some tasks. And on other tasks it killed my productivity.
Basically, stop thinking there are silver bullets, and figure out what works for your team and project.
Looking at the collection of things that people refer to as "Agile", some of the practices work for certain teams at certain times. Saying "its all a sham" is as much bullshit as calling Agile a silver bullet that will solve all your woes. (Just because it's not one extreme, doesn't put it at the other).
The OP calls out two practices, Scrum and TDD. I've tried "Scrum" at 3 different places, where by "Scrum" they meant "have a stand up meeting". Never worked. For that project!
However, TDD has actually been a silver bullet for some tasks. And on other tasks it killed my productivity.
Basically, stop thinking there are silver bullets, and figure out what works for your team and project.