That is something outside the scope of scrum. Whoever you hired may have called that scrum, but it seems they were bringing in unrelated processes.
> turned simple decisions into decision by committee
Scrum isn't a decision-making framework either.
Every time a Scrum project goes badly, any criticism attributed to Scrum is deflected with this no true scottsman argument.
News flash: nobody is doing the actual, literal version of Scrum as defined in the Scrum Guide. Nobody. So if you use this argument to deflect criticisms of Scrum, be consistent & don't attribute any success stories to Scrum either.
This is both true and not exculpatory, IME. I've often referred to/heard this referred to as "Scrum-but", i.e. "Scrum, but X", and it's pretty true in my experience that Scrum legitimizes and encourages Scrum-but.
There are places where Scrum is legitimately useful (as a way for managing stakeholders when dealing with war-room problems where the entire implementation team is of roughly equivalent competency and is literally sitting around a table), but beyond that, the first hint of Scrum-but and the boat's taking on water.
The first thing to do when considering scrum is really understanding the problem to be fixed or process to be potentially improved and if the best approach is an Agile methodology (Not just Scrum, it isn't the only thing out there and isn't always the best solution). Then only adding as much as you need.
Scrum really shouldn't be adding any bureaucracy. Not any more than a sufficiently complex project would already have inherently. In fact just the opposite, it should cut down on bureaucracy and make teams more (drumroll) agile. Which is the whole point of self-managing teams.
Sounds like this guy did a hacky job while calling it Scrum, and was not at all the right hire for your situation.
Oh, it was scrum, complete with an "Certified Advanced Scrum Master(tm)" certification.
>Sounds like this guy did a hacky job while calling it Scrum, and was not at all the right hire for your situation
I agree with this. It was the wrong hire, and the wrong way to manage our software development. It was terrible, and I'll never give scrum a second thought.
Not sure where Scrum says that. In fact I remember it being the inverse. Maybe you just had a bad hire.