Scrum and kanban depend on a lot of upfront planning meetings that focus on the work. Those planning meetings should include product definition, brainstorming,

Scrum and kanban depend on a lot of upfront planning meetings that focus on the work. Those planning meetings should include product definition, brainstorming, technical discussions, etc. and not just be about estimates and schedules. If the planning meetings are well run then all the developers should be excited about cranking out the tasks within the sprint. If the planning meetings either don't happen or leave some people with a lot of questions then each sprint becomes it's own mini-death-march. Given your current work situation, I recommend sitting down for 30-45 minutes each day and just focus on updating the status of your tasks in whatever system your company uses to track the sprint. The value of scrum to your current company is that they probably wouldn't get anything done if they didn't have it (and given your colleagues obsession with the scrum minutiae it seems to fit them well) Stakeholders should be able to talk to devs, the fact that those interactions don't go well at your company is a bad sign, and it suggests that the planning meetings aren't being run correctly which makes the whole agile thing null and void.