To be agile or not to be agile, is that the question?

What is really agile? Are we really agile or has it become a hype?

These were questions that was brought up on todays xp.meetup without coming to any conclusion, but nonetheless a fruitful discussion inspired me to write this post.

One of the issues mentioned was related to technology and how agile you can get. Many agrees that technology influence our way to work and thus how agile we are in our work. And it was in this context that J2EE was mentioned as something that really held you back from working agile. This might be well and true, but isn't the question really "How agile can you get" and at the same time deliver what the customer want with the agreed quality?

Many projects today deal with legacy technology and different aspects of the past that impose restraints on our solutions. Would it not be possible to say that one is agile in the way they are dealing with this legacy technology? Be it test driven development (TDD) with or without behaviour driven development (BDD). The world is full of legacy..