Four weeks ago my team changed from not-really-scrum-we're-just-pretending some some sort of kanban-like process, which was the first real change after I stuck

Four weeks ago my team changed from not-really-scrum-we're-just-pretending some some sort of kanban-like process, which was the first real change after I stuck an item on the wall during a retro which just said "Are we doing Scrum? Should we be?" Today we had a retro in which we talked about how things are going, and we're all more comfortable with how the process fits our actual workflow, and how it's opened up some other changes that have really helped us with getting useful stuff done, delivered and in the hands of people who appreciate it. And this came from within the team, entirely, with the support of our team lead. It's not perfect, but it's good, and we feel able to change things. That's why the other changes happened - because we were reminded that we have the power to change things, and the company actually genuinely believes that. There are some things we can't change, or not so easily, because they cross team boundaries or require money to be spent that we can't convince someone to authorise, but we have more freedom within the team than we had believed that we had. Largely I think because most of us are fairly new to the company and had long ago forgotten the idea of self-organising agile teams because the very concept was a joke most other places we've worked. I suspect we'll change things in the future, and we do have some concerns at the moment about how we split up big bits of work like implementing a completely new system component into cards of a suitable size and self-containedness and various other issues around definitions of done, but we'll work it out. For now, we're apparently more productive, we certainly feel more productive, and we're all happier because we don't have the entirely artificial pressure to ship something every sprint. That's not how the software we maintain works, and not how it should work either. We just ship stuff when it's ready, because that's what makes us and our stakeholders happy. What Fowler's describing is something I've seen so many times. Scrum-adherence is in itself something of a cult in some places, and it's done without any mindfulness for why you choose certain processes, the purpose of certain things and whether Scrum was a good choice for you or not. And I think honestly that's most people's experience of "agile" software development, because people have turned it into an industry of its own and with that comes the books, the rules, the certifications, and the legions of people who read a bit about it and decided that'd be great and it'd tick the trendy "agile" box without having to disrupt the company too much. Bleergh. Oh and something else my current employer does that I've seen literally nowhere else? A no-blame culture. We actually have one. I wish everyone could try it.