I implemented Agile scrum on my team at the behest of my organization. I did it enthusiastically at first, because I thought it might make a difference. My opinion changed within the first 6 months. I think it's a waste of time.
Our stand-ups are pointless because they're just status updates. Not much of consequence can happen in 10 minutes anyway. I ignore our metrics at the end of each sprint. They're meaningless. Our retrospectives are largely useless other than giving shoutouts to team members. I feel the sprint structure leads to Parkinson's law.
This situation, however, is perfectly normal because Agile advocates "people over processes." My team doesn't give a shit about the Agile process, so it's mostly like forced physical training but without the fitness benefits.
Scrum should at best be viewed as training wheels for agile teams. Not the end state. Good teams abandon scrum for Kanban / Lean concepts once they start building good collaboration structures, better communication with business, earn trust by delivering and recognize (as you point out nicely) that the sprint timebox is artificial B.S. in practice. I think the Parkinson's law can be a common trap for teams to fall into with the Sprint timebox malarkey.
Our stand-ups are pointless because they're just status updates. Not much of consequence can happen in 10 minutes anyway. I ignore our metrics at the end of each sprint. They're meaningless. Our retrospectives are largely useless other than giving shoutouts to team members. I feel the sprint structure leads to Parkinson's law.
This situation, however, is perfectly normal because Agile advocates "people over processes." My team doesn't give a shit about the Agile process, so it's mostly like forced physical training but without the fitness benefits.