Defining Impediments in Scrum (Agile)

Impediments are the roadblocks or hindrances faced by the team in agile methodology of software development. To make the definition look more clear and practical, impediments are any causes which will delay team's deliverables or stop from progressing in a task and eventually costing the team's productivity.

 

Impediments are discussed everyday in the daily Scrum meetings. The onus lies on the individual team member to raise the barriers faced by him or her in the current task. ScrumMaster acknowledges the issue and works towards removing the barrier and make the member productive again. If the roadblock can be resolved upfront in the daily scrum meeting, fine. Otherwise, ScrumMaster may call for the follow-up meeting with the team members who are affected due to the impediments.

Depending on the nature of complexity of the impediment, ScrumMaster will resolve the issue herself/ himself or delegate it to any of the team members. It again depends on the availability of the team member for her/ him to address the problem. In case of more complex impediment, ScrumMaster may talk and negotiate with the Product Owner to open a new task and put it in the product backlog. If this impediment is a blocker for the task in hand, then both the current task and the impediment task go to the product backlog.

The best thing about the agile is that the entire team is cross-functional. So the impediment can be addressed by anybody in the team having knowledge about the problem and the possible solution. Nobody in the team can say that this is not my job!