Impediment List – Inhouse Course May 15

I am a strong supporter of identifying small things that we can take action on, one at a time, to get better.  In Scrum, we call this an impediment list.  This week, the class identified these impediments. I think I have ‘translated’ them correctly ….

1. Lack of governance
2. 0% transparency
3. Actively disengaged team members
4. Competing goals
5. Adversarial sponsors
6. Poorly understood technology
7. Losing people mid-project
8. Too many cooks
9. No change management
10. No requirements
11. Individual contributions [not team contributions]
12. Finger-pointing
13. Lack of support
14. Ill-defined teams / structure
15. Lack of team collaboration (including vendor-client)
16. Unrealistic estimates
17. Exit criteria [lack of?]
18. Too high expectations
19. Insufficient funding
20. Silos
21. Changing scope without adjusting (R or T or B).
22. Poor communication
23. Lack of Buy-in
24. Absences from meetings
25. People availability
26. Poor estimates of time
27. Poorly defined tasks
28. No direction
29. No / lack of leadership
30. No understanding of benefits
31. Personal agendas
32. Command and conquer
33. Constant distractions
34. Unrealistic expectations
35. Business ownership / partnership
36. Lack of communication
37. Lack of buy-in / ownership
38. Disengaged team
39. Unrealistic value
40. Skill sets [lack of]
41. Lack of coordination
42. Hidden assumptions
43. Complete assumptions
44. Just get ‘it’ done – don’t know what
45. Unhealthy communication
46. Confusion
47. Lack of involvement from customer
48. Unclear purpose
49. Poor definition
50. Poor team dynamics
51. Single points of failure

There is some duplication, I think, for many reasons.  But perhaps useful in suggesting relative priorities.

A couple of key points:

• We have a list to prioritize.  Then we can act on the most useful stuff first
• Prioritize mainly by ‘how much it is slowing down the team’
• Use cost-benefit analysis to some degree (maybe only intuitive)
• Drive one to completion at a time
• Make them small.  No bigger than one sprint.
• Get the managers to help you (and the Team as well)
• Show results

 

 

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