IMO Agile has become regulatory capture. It's a means by which non-engineers can extract value from a booming market which doesn't directly benefit from their skills.

That being said. I think there is a lot of wisdom in the original agile manifesto. The core principles are solid, but the methodology has clearly been co-opted by consultants and supported by management looking to increase the headcount under themselves.

I've often struggled to understand why my team is made up of only 20% engineers with the other 80% pretending to create value by holding meetings to tell engineers what to build next when I feel like it's your clients that should be doing that.

Ultimately it's engineering that becomes the constrained resource which leads to technical debt in favor of pushing out product's features.

I would venture a guess that most engineers have used (critically) more software in their lives than any non-technical person driving the development of the product. Why then are engineers not the most consulted people on the efficacy and value of new features? I think there is a big myth out there that engineers are incapable of directly handling client feedback.