Leaderboard

A daily stand-up meeting in Agile is an opportunity for the project team to discuss a project's progress at a high level toward the Sprint Goal and adapt the Sprint Backlog as necessary. The 3 topics that are address in these daily stand-up meetings are: 1. What did you do yesterday? 2. What will you do today? 3. What (if anything) is blocking your progress? Addressing these 3 questions is to make sure everyone is aligned and if anything impedes the team from getting the work done, reduces the team productivity and slows down team speed in achieving the Sprint Goal. Impediments could be of many types such as - people issues - team not skilled enough - technical issues - operational issues - managerial issues like lack of management support. The impediments are different from obstacles (which relates to when something or someone entirely stands in the way. Impediments are also different from risks that are possible events/obstacles that occur while impediments are already reality. All impediments need not be fixed together in one go. But prioritize impediments based on impact on the progress/productivity, cost-benefit analysis, sequencing. Whole team’s viewpoint in identifying the top impediment should be seek and Scrum Master (SM) should ask the team to decide. Typically, SM is the best person to fix the impediments, while sometimes it could also be the project owner (PO)), development team (doers) or some people from outside the team. One expects to see a benefit from work on impediments in about every Sprint. A good SM creates an environment where impediments are raised. One need not wait for daily scrum meet to raise an impediment, but the as soon as one identifies one. And SM will push the team to decide on the impediment and act on removing them. The SM should evaluate on removal of an impediment based on following few questions such as: 1. Is it really an impediment or is it something the development team can resolve themselves? 2. Do we need to remove this impediment? 3. What is the team problem? Something will only become an impediment when it exceeds the self-organizing capabilities of the team. For example, scarcity of a skill might become an impediment if the development team can nott think of an alternate option themselves. Maybe a team member is eager to learn the desired skill and sees this as a great opportunity. Another example is team conflicts does not have to an impediment as SM can lead the team through a healthy conflict and debate into a stronger team. Few strategies that can help in removing the impediments: 1. Don’t wait for daily scrum to raise an impediment 2. Clear Sprint Goal can help in identifying if something is a real impediment 3. Differentiate between blocks and impediments 4. Create a simple flip-over board for easy visualization on the impediment, action plan to remove it and status as this will help in increasing transparency 5. Keep track of fixed impediments and incorporate in the Sprint Review and Retrospective 6. SM should have good understanding of the organizational culture so as to getting things done by choosing the right approach 7. Be brave and creative to take bold decisions 8. Collaborate with PO and other stakeholders 9. Stop spending time and effort in solving the wrong problem.