Sounds like management is using sprints to enforce deadlines and releases. Our team uses them to improve our ability to estimate, which in turn requires us to t

Sounds like management is using sprints to enforce deadlines and releases. Our team uses them to improve our ability to estimate, which in turn requires us to think each set of technical requirements through and anticipate issues before we start pounding keyboards. We use them to structure our work, but decoupled them from releases. The Dev team owns the sprints, but the business owns releases. DevOps uses Kanban however, because it works better for them. That makes us more flexible. Agile. It's been a years-long process but I'm really happy with our "Agility" these days. Our sponsor is the VP of Tech and he gets it (used to be our QA lead). If we have rollover we talk briefly about estimating better but it's not the end of the world, because we actually have gotten better at estimating. Some sprints we nail it. Other times we miss, but management isn't using those metrics as a bludgeon so it actually helps us to work smarter.