I found the concepts about servant leadership especially powerful and especially useful in pushing back against some of the abuses you describe. True servant leadership usually makes things better, but so few leaders are able to execute it.

I have a complicated relationship with Scrum. Iterative development is the common sense approach I took many years ago, so when faced with Agile/Scrum it felt familiar. It is brought in due to the often dysfunctional relationship between IT and the business. It was the main reason it was brought into cube farm I was working at. I could, and should, write a long essay about this experience…

I ended up getting shown the door for pushing back too hard. Nonetheless, I felt the methodology could be useful if executed EARNESTLY. If instead it is brought in as a stick to beat developers with, well that is another story entirely