I've offered my opinion on "agile in the waterfall", but I'd not thought too much about agile in fragments, to wit: no co-location; little client participation; disjointed work; and low priority outcomes.
Sounds like a recipe for project failure for sure
However, along comes leadinganswers (a prominent agilist) with a piece entitled "agile for fragmented part-time teams". I had to read this one!
The main point of the article is that the backlog management ideas in agile can serve many project situations quite well, even those in which the project is part-time people doing "white space" tasks -- tasks of opportunity that fit in where they can.
There's hardly any commitment to schedule but that doesn't mean that there can't be a commitment to quality in whatever is delivered. And, it need not be software... backlogs work on hardware as well.
And, the agile idea that the team has to get together, even if virtually, on some periodic (schedule driven) or event driven occasion to review the bidding, progress, and problems also drives progress, albeit slowly.
There's more in the article, but the point is made: many agile practices can be used to good effect even if not in a contiguous and conventional project scenario.
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