Category: impediment

You are the Impediment

September 13, 2008 by mcottmeyer

In my last post "Secretaries Make the Best ScrumMasters", I made the point that ScrumMasters and Agile Project Managers need to be held to a higher standard. Tracking impediments is not enough. Helping the team remove impediments is not enough. We need project leaders than can help the team anticipate impediments and work to make sure those things never become impediments in the first place.

Project leaders should be able to understand what the team is building, what technologies they are using, and the impacts of using those technologies. We don't' need to be experts but we need to be able to keep up in a conversation. We need to understand what the business needs and what they are trying to accomplish. Project managers and ScrumMasters should be asking questions and digging into places where people disagree.

Got impediment?

March 3, 2008 by cspag

On a daily basis, agile teams should be answering three basic questions: (1) What did you work on yesterday? (2) What are you working on today? and (3) Do you have any impediments to accomplishing your tasks? That third one is a key question, and one that is answered differently depending on the maturity of your team. What is an impediment anyway? It can be a multitude of things, from organizational issues to technical resources, from physical impediments to technical ones. But how good is your team at identifying impediments and voicing them?