Scrum at its core is about setting your team up to LEARN and improve by introducing feedback cycles. That's it. If your team learns after one cycle that they

Scrum at its core is about setting your team up to LEARN and improve by introducing feedback cycles. That's it. If your team learns after one cycle that they are more effective without one of the common ceremonies, then your team should drop it. The problem that Adam is observing is not with Scrum itself - it's that too many miseducated managers lose sight of the point and are obsessing over the wrong details. Source: I have been on extremely successful Scrum teams, I have seen Scrum done properly dramatically transform "stale" teams, and I have trained with Jeff Sutherland, one of Scrum's founders.