It’s not really common sense, and the agile I know of says quite a lot about how to accomplish goals, if your goal is “delivering quality software products/services”.

There also is bullshit Agile of course, which you describe well, but that’s no different from any old software process that’s more bureaucracy than content.

My point is that the cynicism ignores actual differences in practice and process that can have an order of magnitude impact on performance, and its not always “obvious” for smart people to adopt such practices.

Consider Lean manufacturing: the Japanese thought it was just a common sense extrapolation of Henry Ford’s system of organization. It still took decades for the US auto manufacturers (including Ford!) to wrap their heads around it.

There were plenty of crooks and charlatans in that field too. It didn’t negate the importance of what Toyota had figured out.