> the sprint is meant to reassure management that they'll get at least *something (even if not a full X) in a predictable time

I would rephrase it as "sprint is meant to make management to believe that they'll get at least something in a predictable time".

I also notice that lots of comments seem to be coming from front-end or customer-based companies. For backend and b2b, 2 weeks sprint for some new functionality is funny.