“Scrum teams will have no chance of succeeding when they follow a plan instead of solving problems that matter.” - I think this is not entirely true. the problem lies more on how “new requests” are brought to the team. There is always a plan. How you get the teams to pitch into that plan and deliver what is necessary is the key factor. Involving them earlier in the process, transforming the request into a problem as opposed to “you need to do ABC” will bring you the agile and iterative approach naturally, as you get teams to think of solutions to problems as opposed to implementing solutions requested by someone outside the team. This is where a PO (or PM) plays a key role as he needs to be this person, ensuring the requests come to the team in the right way.

“Cross-functionality entails the team having end-to-end responsibilities. Such responsibilities shouldn’t be shared between different groups.” - I have seen this leading to teams become silo’d within the tech group. They become self sufficient and autonomous which in turn requires hardly any interaction with other tech teams.

I agree with you when you say Scrum is often implemented for execution. However, unless you are working for a company where they have one (or more) digital products and that’s their core business, you can’t help but fall into it as you are part of a bigger machine and not everything revolves around Tech or Product Development.