"the promise of being able to replace temperamental, expensive craftsmen with fungible, cheaper assemblers"

Wait, are you suggesting that is the "promise" of Agile as well? Because that is not true: http://scrumreferencecard.com/Obstacles_To_Enterprise_Agility_255033.pdf

"It is naive to think of human beings as resources. Adding people to a team will not reliably increase the intangible resources--and may detract from them. After a year of doing Scrum, one of my clients reported “Once a team is formed, we would rather lose a team member than add one!” In another case, when the Scrum team itself made the hiring decision, adding a new member went well. Even when giving the team hiring autonomy, it’s inadvisable to grow it much larger than seven people. In some circumstances, adding teams may result in more progress, if we’re mindful of the intangible resources"

These methodologies are built FOR programmers and FOR their craft. Most coders find these practices enjoyable and wonder why they had not used them sooner. The managers are the ones that take more convincing.

L-LL-L--L-LL-L--L-LL-L--
-R--R-RR-R--R-RR-R--R-RR
B--B--B--B--B--B--B--B--
H---H---H---H---H---H---
(the triplet paradiddle with high-hat)