Guys - thanks very much for your input but note my original question. I know that what you say is right about why what they do in my wife's company is not the way things should be done. But my question was: what can be done to improve a situation like that? And not just specifically for my wife, I'm asking the more general question for others who are in similar situations.

The example I gave about the daily meetings was just that: an example, meant to illustrate why my wife thinks that it seems more important for their managers to pat their backs about using "agile methods" than to actually know what they're doing.

That said - I'd also like to point your attention to another commenter here who pointed out that the original authors of the agile manifesto were actually trying to achieve a less strictly structured work methodology. However, I get from your comments about how a daily meeting "is supposed to be done" that some of you seem to indeed have pretty strict ideas about what constitutes agile and what doesn't. So that is kind of an interesting observation in itself, I think.