Impediments – Charlotte Course July 2014

In the Charlotte course, the following impediments were identified.  These came from different people and were expressed in different ways.  I copied what they said.  So, for example, sometimes a “…, lack of” is implied.

  1. No one knows what done looks like
  2. Missed stakeholders
  3. Poor or non-existent planning
  4. One release per year (mentality)
  5. Technology
  6. Undefined critical risks
  7. Gold-plating requirements
  8. Goals that are not measurable
  9. Modeling for the sake of modeling
  10. Lack of knowledge share
  11. Not a clear defined deliverable
  12. No client involvement
  13. Multitasking
  14. No capability to deliver
  15. Lack of collaboration
  16. Dependent on other projects
  17. Decreased motivation to change
  18. Adversarial position with S/W vendor
  19. Lack of S/W vendor participation
  20. Leadership
  21. Interruptions
  22. Technology change
  23. Unrealistic expectations
  24. Not enough money
  25. Lack of commitment
  26. Unrealistic timeline
  27. Management override
  28. Requirements not defined
  29. Low morale
  30. Budget
  31. Communication
  32. Not enough resources [He might have meant people]
  33. Single point of failure
  34. Scope creep
  35. Changing requirements
  36. Wrong people
  37. Lack of teamwork
  38. Not enough people assigned
  39. Missed requirements
  40. Lack of communication
  41. Did not plan budget properly

This is what they listed.  Many duplicates were not listed twice.  The number does NOT indicate priority (numbers are added only as a reference).

Some items were what each attendee felt was his team’s biggest impediment today.

Let me make a few quick recommendations.

  1. Impediments can be anything that slows down the team.  Anything.
  2. All the impediments go into one public list.  The one impediment that is slowing the Team down the most goes to the top of the list.  Perhaps after consider benefit-cost analysis in prioritizing, etc.
  3. Some impediments can’t be fixed, but probably any impediment can at least be mitigated (have the impact reduced).
  4. The Team should prioritize them, but often they will not agree.
  5. Fix the top one, one at a time.  See Theory of Constraints, for example.
  6. Slice your fixes into small things, so that noticeable improvement can be measured each Sprint.
  7. Although the Team may become numb to many old impediments, re-awaken their senses to the ‘we have always done it this way’ kind of impediment.
  8. Give the Team a challenge, to identify impediments to fix that will double the Team’s productivity.
  9. Never, never, never, never stop getting better.
  10. Recognize the value of a SM who aggressively attacks the impediments.
  11. Impediments can be fixed by the SM, by the Team (or team members), and by people outside the Team (including people outside the company).

 

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