I define Faux Scrum as calling a management process Scrum, but that process is not Scrum.
It could be approaching Scrum, as part of the transition to Scrum. But isn’t there yet.
Or it could be completely not Scrum, yet calling it Scrum because some executive wanted to “do Scrum”.
The first company I was at which wanted to “do Scrum” got about halfway there.
Using Kelly Waters Scrum as a checklist guide...
All-in-all, not bad considering Scrum was a new-fangled approach. Lots of winging it.
The second company I was at said they were “doing Scrum”.
This was a complete Scrum sham. The director even said “We’re agile... in spirit.” That’s middle management being directed by executive order to “be agile”, yet has no interest in giving up their traditional command-&-control structure. Middle management can tell the executives “Yes, we’re agile!” with a straight face, yet by no measure whatsoever is the management process agile.
The third company I was at said they were “doing Scrum”, but they are actually transitioning to Scrum. Ever so slowly transitioning to Scrum. I expect the transition will finally be complete in about ten years.
I think the transition to Scrum is going so slowly because management considers Scrum to be a development methodology. Something that “the devs do”, and management stays the same as it has always been.
Scrum is not a development methodology; Scrum is an agile management process. It’s something management does. (Which impacts how the devs go about their work. But if management does not embrace Scrum, then devs won’t reap the benefits of Scrum, which in turn means the business won’t realize the advantages of Scrum.)