As an engineering manager I tried to replace daily stand up meetings with a “drop a couple of lines in the team chat daily”. I think it worked great and a lot of more relevant information was brought forward and lead to more productive co-operation between team members.
However, some team members thought this was “wrong” and “not how agile should work” so eventually after continuing complaining I had to reinstate/allow these stand-ups again…
Did you try telling them that that is _absolutely_ how "agile" works? Even Scrum, the way most companies adopt it meticulously, is just a list of recommendations. The key is that the team finds a process that works for them and keeps evolving it. I guess in your case it may have called for a compromise.
Unfortunately, if those guys had gone up the management chain saying how you're "not agile", they probably would have won...
However, some team members thought this was “wrong” and “not how agile should work” so eventually after continuing complaining I had to reinstate/allow these stand-ups again…