Sure, I've been there, trying to do R&D under an imposed scrum regime. But, it's dangerous to challenge the current management religion unless you are in a posi

Sure, I've been there, trying to do R&D under an imposed scrum regime. But, it's dangerous to challenge the current management religion unless you are in a position of power. The solution is the time-honored practice of keeping two sets of books. Even if your true stand-up report would be: Yesterday: thinking. Today: thinking more. Blockers: meetings like this. You would be well-advised not to say so. Instead, you need to identify or invent some small subsidiary tasks that can be used for stand-up reporting, e.g.: Yesterday: designed alternate schema for one of the database tables. Today: timing tests with new schema. Blockers: none. In this way, you can carry out your research, which may involve a meandering path, fuzzy ideas that are hard to express verbally, backtracking, and work in units of multiple days, in private. While doing so, you have a parallel public task list that follows the scrum agenda and can be used to keep people off your back while you work on the actual problems that need to be solved.