I feel like in a lot places the ultimate purpose of sprints is to let executives think they can see data that represents the amount of work getting done down to a fine level.
Exactly right. I've seen it first-hand. It's all about the data. It's also neatly separated from the real operating context in a way that presents it as highly misleading.
Incidentally, if you criticize the data (such as asking "Where does this data show the effort that people who spent time mentoring/pairing but didn't do the actual 'commit'? Where does the data show the effort spent code reviewing?), you should know that it won't be received well. The emperor really does not want to hear that he's not wearing clothes.
Indeed. Which is backwards. The goal shouldn't be giving execs a warm fuzzy feeling. It should be identifying issues and risks that execs can help fix. I.e. handle exceptions to the norm.
