Scrum
Ceremony that optimises for managers, not engineers.
Scrum's two-week sprints, daily standups, sprint reviews, retrospectives, and backlog grooming consume a staggering amount of engineering time for dubious benefit. The framework was designed to make software development legible to non-technical stakeholders. It succeeds at that — at the cost of actual productivity.
The sprint boundary is the core problem. Work doesn't fit neatly into two-week boxes. Features get rushed to "make the sprint" or artificially split to match the cadence. Story points become a performance metric rather than a planning tool. Velocity charts give managers a sense of control while telling engineers nothing they didn't already know.
Kanban with WIP limits achieves the same flow visibility without the ceremony. Pull work when capacity exists, limit work in progress, measure cycle time. No estimation theatre, no sprint commitments that become soft deadlines.