If you apply the two most conspicuous Scrum practices, stand-ups and iterations, and do nothing else, what you’ll have is a pretty effective way to micromanage a low-skilled team. Management can closely manage what they do and steer their work at a very detailed level.
The other way is to build a team of skilled folks. Don’t treat knowledge workers like replaceable cogs, and create an environment where skilled people are trusted and enabled to do good work. In that kind of environment, there’s still a place for agile practices, but their intent won’t be to ensure that progress is being made every day. They’ll be there to provide a structure to what’s being produced and a cycle of collaborative evaluation that enables rapid feedback and a change of direction.
In other words, the other way is to actually value individuals and interactions over processes and tools, like the Agile Manifesto suggests.
