Now all the Scrum accolytes will pile on, and tell you that "you don't understand Scrum", or "you aren't doing it right".

But what you have explained, Henry, is precisely what happens. I see it again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again.......

Scrum is a toxic process, because it causes people to focus on a specific set of ceremonies instead of what actually matters. Things like outcomes; things like quality; things like design; things like can your team focus? Things like are there important issues that are falling through the crack? Things like are your teams collaborating with other teams, and have they defined how they will integrate their work?

There are SO MANY things that matter more than whether there is a daily standup.

And Scrum's model of leadership is massively defective. Teams need a servant leader - and a servant leader is a real leader - not just a facilitator. They need someone to help them get organized; and that someone needs to understand how the teams need to work. That person needs to have experience in building things themselves.

So much of the Agile Manifesto was interpreted incorrectly, in an extreme maanner. And the Manifesto does not get the issues right anyway - much of it is wrong. E.g., face-to-face meetings are NOT always the best way to collaborate: for complex issues, collaboration needs to occur over time, and include a mix of communication formats: complex issues need to be written down - things like how you will branch and merge and integrate when you have multiple repos - people might need to draft some ideas about that before meeting. It depends. But the Agile community insists that one should ALWAYS meet face to face if that is an option. An extreme.

Scrum keeps people from thinking for themselves. Because of that, it is toxic. It DOES get in the way of building the right thing, and of building it well.