I don’t think there’s anything in agile that has no value. I’ve seen times where stand-ups, sprint planning, estimating, and time-boxed iterations weren’t optimal, but were used anyway. (scrum wikipedia entry lists most of them as when you shouldn’t use scrum) I think the best results come from identifying your feedback loops/channels and making them as small as possible.
I also think it is a mistake to try to insert a product owner / scrum master in between the stake holders and the people doing the work (assuming the stakeholders understand the problem domain). When you can sit the team next to the person who has the problem is when you can get the best results.
I’ve been places that have said we’re using agile, because they were doing scrum because they had a daily stand up and user stories and a project manager whose job it was to gather requirements and deliver them to programmers who then had to estimate those stories and then sign up for them in a sprint planning meeting and …. but at the same time produce DODAF like requirements and documentation and have a requirements sign off meeting (that took place a good month before any work was due to begin) and followed a rigorous change management process so that there would be a clear trail of whose fault it was
So really I’m against that. and agile doesn’t say to do that, but it get’s called that anyway.
(corrollary, I've also worked at a place that was very agile, but followed almost none of the processes people say is 'agile')
What I know works and works well is communicating with and understanding the problem / needs of the person who wants the work to be done. Figuring out from them what what the most important thing is and then doing that until done or the most important thing changes. I think agile as originally conceived is that, and probably is that for some now, but it’s also a lot of other stuff (because people focused on the ‘process’ elements and ignored the ‘people’).
So to me LEAN more closely communicates those parts of agile that I think it was originally meant to be.