You found a loose "lowercase A"/kanban approach that works well for your team! I also kind of prefer a kanban approach, if it works well for the test of the team/company.
> It's whatever the project manager told me I should face in the morning meeting
Just to be really clear - this is not "scrum". People can have a really difficult time with "agile" and related practices because they're often conflated with bad people/managers/teams. For most of my developmement career I've followed some sort of agile-two-week-sprint-scrum-with-daily-standup process and I've never been told what tasks I'm doing each morning. I've never experienced this problem you started (but ive definitely had other problems!)
At the risk of being a bit no true Scottsman, the best agile practicioners (and I don't mean the Deloitte/Thoughtworks paid-by-the-buzzword type) advocate for finding a process that works well for your team, picking bits from the larger "Agile Toolbox". That's True Agile.
We’re constantly refining our processes. It’s like any other part of the business in that it benefits in having a design thinking methodology applied or else it goes stale and fails to keep up with changing dynamics of the business and beyond. For example we decided to do fewer releases against conventional wisdom because we realised our customers were not able to keep up with training and other internal processes they are required to conduct for compliance reasons.
Exactly. When I first learned about Agile development they clearly stated there is no "Agile process". It is simply having only the minimum amount of actual documented/enforced practices needed to ensure smooth development. Is your team struggling to finish tasks because they're not communicating enough? Have a morning check-in where anyone who is having an issue can state their issue, someone else can chime in that they can/know how to assist, and they can discuss it afterwards. Team being overwhelmed by requests for new/unplanned work? Set up a task tracking system and prioritize your tasks ensuring things get done in the order they need to be with none forgotten. Software development doesn't look the same anywhere you go. What works for one team/customer/environment won't necessarily work for any other. Agile is adapting the process to the people. Alternatives like CMMI do the opposite by forcing the people to adapt to the process.
The number one issue I've encountered in my area is companies that say they use Scrumm when they really don't. Scrumm is a very specific, defined process, and as they clearly state in their "handbook" if you're not following the process exactly as it's described then you aren't doing Scrumm. Period.
> It's whatever the project manager told me I should face in the morning meeting
Just to be really clear - this is not "scrum". People can have a really difficult time with "agile" and related practices because they're often conflated with bad people/managers/teams. For most of my developmement career I've followed some sort of agile-two-week-sprint-scrum-with-daily-standup process and I've never been told what tasks I'm doing each morning. I've never experienced this problem you started (but ive definitely had other problems!)
At the risk of being a bit no true Scottsman, the best agile practicioners (and I don't mean the Deloitte/Thoughtworks paid-by-the-buzzword type) advocate for finding a process that works well for your team, picking bits from the larger "Agile Toolbox". That's True Agile.