PO Impediments – Charlotte May 2013

Several things to say about impediments:

1. Few teams have a public impediment list. They should.
2. Few teams are aggressively attacking impediments, as I see it. (I guess this depends on what one means by aggressive. I mean full time alienation of impediments. Mercilessly.)
3. We must use impediments, and continuous improvement to get higher velocity in the next sprint.  Quick results. Maybe not every time, but most of the time.
4. Most teams do not consider impediments of every type.  For example, often teams will not even think about product owner related impediments.
5. No two people completely agree om what exactly is or is not a PO related impediment. And, some say that every impediment is ‘PO related’. …Fair warning.

Connected to these thoughts, in a recent Scrum class we identified the following Product Owner related impediments.

Introvert or difficulty selling or evangelizing
Process Understanding (lack of)
SME Level (not enough)
Allocation
Wrong priorities = constant change
Inappropriately defined user stories
Inability to negotiate or find middle ground
Heavy Req phase
Rigid UX Framework
Hand-off mentality
Ineffective Scrum
LOB participation (lack of)
Competing priorities
Release Mgmt Std Requirements
Integrating Agile with waterfall teams
Teams too large
Lack of expertise
Lack of empowerment

Perhaps this list suggests some useful thoughts to you.

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