I have been working with both. Both work in specific settings. Done right today is clearly better as in the past. However most "agile" implementations are not good ( #agile != bad #Scrum), most "v-model" implementation also dont follow their own process (as that would kill the projects).

Looks like somebody was selling you strange habits and called that "agile". My understanding of the #Lean and #Agile concepts is quite different but ... everybody seems to live in a subjective world today ...