Yeah, I recognize there's some places that do agile in a good way (hence the qualifiers I put in); I've just been burned enough that I tend to be deeply skeptic

Yeah, I recognize there's some places that do agile in a good way (hence the qualifiers I put in); I've just been burned enough that I tend to be deeply skeptical of it. What I've noticed is that some managers fall in love with charts and measurements (because they can use those metrics to impress others in the organization), and anything that can't be superficially measured ends up either being devalued or outright banned. I remember one place I worked, they brought in consultants to "help" us create an agile process. After about four months or so, they declared the operation a success because the "velocity" had increased by 4x. (Which would be incredible if it were true). In reality, we were just measuring four times more things, and development was going much slower, but those charts sure looked nice.