This is _exactly_ the problem - agile is never defined by itself, it is defined in terms of some desirable outcomes. Project was on time and succesful? Great victory for agile. Project failed? Need more agile in the future.
In my experience, all this is used as a smoke screen by management types who have no real idea what they are doing to externalize their own accountability.
In some ways that's appropriate, because nobody actually cares about being agile. They care about shipping working software on time. So the real essence of agile is asking "How can we ship working (or closer) software faster?", and adjusting your process in response. If you aren't at least willing to adjust your process, you aren't doing agile.
Replace agile word with that in your paragraph and it makes sense without sounding silly.
If you've done well you've probably learned and adapted.
If you havent done well, you probably need to reflect and work how to do it better next time.
Things arnt 'proper' agile when they are not about adapting but instead following a specific process your team cant change.
If you havent done well, you probably to reflect and work how to do it better next time.
In that case, you can also replace "Agile" with "Kung-Fu!" Actually, I'm serious. There are various anti-philosophies in art and the martial arts which say something like this.
OODA loop, plan do check act, kaizan etc
The core is the same.
Cool, tell that to your "scrum master" next time you see him.
The key thing is that the changes have to make things better. You should be able try those things and see if they improve things.
Lots of teams use kanban, and some teams mob. If you mob as a team what's the point in standups?
What's the point in sprints, if your continously improving, continously releasing, continously getting feedback and able to forecast well without them? Your better than scrum in my opinion then.
Scrum is a bit basic these days, but it's a good baseline start from. Thats the problem with a lot scrum purists. They will never get beyond a fairly basic level of performance.
Now the kittens do stand ups everyday and meow on cue. It's a success for management.
The software will be slow and buggy and do the wrong thing. If you find this out in month 1, then that's great. If you start with 2 months of careful planning to make sure you don't get it wrong, you'll find out it's wrong in month 3.