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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