> First and foremost is that most product/project managers, engineering managers, “scrum masters”, etc. do not truly love doing the work of backlog refinement,

> First and foremost is that most product/project managers, engineering managers, “scrum masters”, etc. do not truly love doing the work of backlog refinement, ticket management, writing acceptance criteria, or other forms of planning that entail actionable results. In my experience this rings true. Whenever I see a ticket with no description or acceptance criteria, a ticket that's blocked by another ticket in the middle of the backlog, or a ticket that's being repeatedly rewritten mid sprint to include work that's already in the To Do column or at the top of the backlog, I feel like walking up to the Scrum Master and going "What would you say... you do here?". Bring this stuff up at retro and blame gets redirected and watered down. The action becomes "we as a team" need to get better at doing the Scrum Master's job. But like you say, they're very fond of big picture stuff like PowerPoints and meetings about doing agile better.