Nasty Impediments: Unclogging the pipe for personal, team, and business agility. A business is only as fast and agile as its slowest feedback loop. Impediments clog feedback loops just like cholesterol clogs veins. Stacia helps to identify, plan a strategy for, and remove impediments at any level.

1. Enabling Business Agility:
Unclogging
Organizations of Nasty
Impediments
Stacia Viscardi, CST, CEO
Sigma Software Meetup
AgileEvolution, Inc.
Twitter: AgileEvolution_

2. Stacia Heimgartner Viscardi
ca
2003 67 failagility
100s
19
1000s
2

3. What are Impediments?
Impediments are anything that block, suspend,
slow down, obscure, or otherwise interrupt the
delivery of business value and/or feedback
regarding that business value.
An organization’s
success completely rests
on its ability to identify
and swiftly remove
impediments in both
development and
feedback.
AgileEvolution_

4. • Are we able to deliver with little drag/resistance?
• Are we able to adapt quickly? How do we know?
• Have we identified sources of change? Have we discussed
prioritizing those sources?
• What does value mean to us? How do we maximize it?
• Is the customer just satisfied? Or very happy? What do we
do to boost that experience?
• How do we get better at answering these questions?
Mission Impediments
AgileEvolution_

5. Why is it important to identify and
resolve i8ns?
Deliver
Feedback
Impediments are the
cholesterol in the veins of
business agility.
Lack of
automated
testing
No CI Env
– QA Env
locked
down
Release
process
owned by
diff team
Technical
debt is
killing us
Servers
down again
– can we
cloud?
Still
waiting on
handoffs
from BA!
Afraid to
bring this
up – perf
reviews!
Too many
“product
owners”
Too many
sprint
interruptions
Too much
time in PI
Planning
Can’t do
UAT in
sprint
No user
analytics in
tool
Respond to
production
issues
People not
dedicated
to teams
Dependencies
between
silos!
Managers
coming to
Retrospectives
Offshore
teams hard to
work with Waterfalling
in sprint
Nobody cares
what the
teams say!
Our “coaches”
suck!
I can’t slow
down enough
to think!
We’re still
date driven!
Where’s
negotiation?
Architects still
control
everything!
No devs
allowed at
Scrum of
scrums
Our scaing
scaling model
is killing us
I’m being
forced to
user story
points ???
ScrumMasters
have 5 teams
at once!
Failure is NOT
an option in
this company!
We just buffer
40% of sprint
for interrupts
My friend’s
company
does XP
Morale is low Product
owner won’t
participate!
We don’t
have perfect
user stories!
Must use
GHERKIN t
be agile!
Our
leadership
culture is not
agile Our leaders
have not
been to agil
training
I’m not
certified so I
can’t make
that decision
All of our
teams JIRA
boards have
to be exactly
alike
The career
path for a
ScrumMaster
is Project
Manager
All of our
sprints must
stop/start on
same day
We stopped doing
retrospectives because
nothing was changing.
😵
AgileEvolution_

6. • Daily Scrum
• Retrospective
• Any interaction
• Your own observations
• In the way the rest of the
business interfaces with the team
• Surveys for employee/customer engagement
• Sales
• Social Media
• To name a few
Where might I see impediments?
AgileEvolution_

7. Impediments Reveal themselves
in moments…
…of trust
…when anger and/or sadness outweigh
lack of trust
…during observations/listening
…of coincidence
An attentive coach seeks these
opportunities.
AgileEvolution_

8. Impediment Categories
Category
• Operational/Process
• Delivering value/work
• Dependencies
• Interruptions
• Managerial/Leadership
• Social
• Financial
• Legal
• Cultural
• Psychological/Personal
• Technical
• Knowledge
• Legacy Thinking
Example
• Our daily is running 30 minutes!
• My story is blocked
• Vendor is late
• My manager interrupts me
• Managers don’t support agile
• Team always loses
• No budget to upgrade dev env
• Legal team shutting us down
• We’ve always done it this way
• I feel trapped
• Old infrastructure
• Only Bob knows how to fix that
• Deadline driven / no negotiation
AgileEvolution_

9. Frequently heard impediment rebuttals
(which are also impediments!)
That’s the
way we’ve
always done
things…
Big boss says
so
It’s an
emergency!
We’ll get in
trouble if we
don’t…
It’s just too
expensive!
We don’t
know how
to…
That’s not
agile!
It’s too much
effort.
Yes,
but…
AgileEvolution_

10. AgileEvolution_

11. Exercise: Find the ImpedimentsSurvey Response
“Morale is, in my opinion, dangerously low. Speaking
personally, I do not feel that my manage values my input, and in
fact there are many times that I feel like I am viewed as little
more than a resource to fill in the gaps that my manager simply
does not have the time to handle. I do not feel empowered, I do
not feel valuable. I feel like new technologies and ideologies
are only adopted when they were brought to the table by my
manager, and that any ideas brought by me are shot down
and / or ignored. Time management is an oxymoron in this
company. We, as developers, are told when a feature will be
done, regardless of our input. We are regularly forced to miss
deadlines because of unreasonable commitments which only
serves to make us feel worse and wind up scrambling at the
end.”
What would you do if this came from your team?
AgileEvolution_

12. unresolved impediments
create
Learned Helplessness
AgileEvolution_
Quick chat:
What are the
processes and/or
situations that
people in your org
feel helpless to
change?

13. What do we do about them?
• Make them visible
• Empower teams to resolve
what they can
• Develop an escalation path
that focuses on empowerment
first
• Whomever reported the
impediment says when it’s
satisfactorily resolved (not the
PMO, not the management
team, etc.)
AgileEvolution_

14. Impediment Reporting
• Are employees and customers happier?
• i8n queuing; wait time; lead time
• # i8ns by consumer/product area by type
• # i8ns escalated; % i8ns resolved by teams or
reporter
• Cycle time for impediment removal
• # of product backlog items to be delivered to
customers within next two weeks; % of overall
product backlog
AgileEvolution_

15. Management Help Needed
Adapted from Mike Beedle, Michael Herman
Source document: ES-Intro4.0
Enterprise Scrum/Business Agility Canvas
AgileEvolution_

16. Impediments “roll up” –
Each layer subsumes impediments
from the layers beneath
AgileEvolution_

17. Business Agility
An organization is only as fast and
agile as its longest
feedback/recovery cycle.
Enable failagility: recovering from stimulus and
moving into recovery.
AgileEvolution_

18. Exercise - Personal Map
• Identify a personal goal
• Answer: What impedes me from meeting my
personal goal?
• Feel free to play 5 Whys
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19. Exercise: Personal Map
Goal: Become
Grand Prix
Rider
I1: Lack of
Time
I2: Lack of
Fitness
I3: Lack of
Ability
AgileEvolution_
My idol:
Charlotte Dujardin
I1.1: Working
too much

20. Exercise: Personal Map
• For each impediment (and sub-impediments),
consider
– Actions that you could take to improve/change
the situation
– Actions that you could stop doing to
improve/change the situation
– Who may be able to help you?
– What defines timely resolution?
– Do you see patterns?

21. Actions to Start/Stop (or Continue)
Goal: Become
Grand Prix
Rider
I1: Lack of
Time
I2: Lack of
Fitness
I3: Lack of
Ability
Find
coaching
jobs closer
to home
Get up
earlier
Find more
horses to
ride
Get up
earlier
Gym!
Clinics
Stop
eating
badly
Stop
taking on
extra work
stuff
Stop
thinking
that you
can’t
AgileEvolution_
My idol:
Charlotte Dujardin
Stop
working
late!

22. Exercise: Organizational/Team Map
What can be done at each step?
Who can help me?
AgileEvolution_
Impediment
Cluster
Work with others to identify
patterns and join forces!

23. Exercise
Do another map for an organizational/team goal
and its impediments. Repeat the process:
– 5 whys
– What should we start doing?
– What should we stop doing?
– Who is able to own the action?
– Who do we need help from?
– How/when will we know the impediment has
been resolved?
AgileEvolution_
Feel free to work
with someone,
or independently
– up to you!

24. Tracking Impediments:
Sure – go for it
As a <requestor> I need <something to be fixed> so
that I may <value>.
As a developer, I need to explore some tools to help
me improve developer testing/UTDD so that I’m
committing less buggy code.
As a team member, I’d like daily scrum meetings to
stick to 15 minutes or less so that I can get back to
work.
AgileEvolution_

25. Impediment
Detected: Sprint 5
September 27, 2017
From: Team Awesome
Description: Need to automate functional tests so that we can
decrease time spent in manual testing. Time spent in manual
testing per sprint is currently 20 hours per week.
Ultimate resolution: all functional tests automated, estimated 6 six
sprints total
Good first step: implement auto test tool and automate tests for
this sprint’s stories
Owner: Bob
Review: Sprint 7

26. Who is the Product Owner of an
Impediment?
• The person(s) reporting it!
• Impediment acceptance criteria are important
– What does the long term solution look like?
– Is there any step toward long term that we can live
with for now?
• The person(s) reporting it = accepts resolution OR
NOT
• Ever seen a management team work in sprints to
resolve issues and then hold a sprint review for
the teams to attend to accept their work?
I HAVE!
AgileEvolution_

27. Impediment Lifecycle
i8n raised
by team/
other
Can
team/
other
solve?
i8n solved
😄
i8n goes to
SM I8n
backlog
Can SM
facilitate
resolution
i8n goes to
WORST
backlog
Can
WORST
solve?
i8n solution
presented to
team/other
org constraint;
revisit in future
😑
yes
no
no
no yes
Team/
other
👍 ?
yes
yes
no
AgileEvolution_

28. WORST Team: What’s on your door/wall?
How are you moving the needle?
AgileEvolution_

29. OCS impediment backlog

30. i8ns in the i8n process
How do we better:
• Detect/seek them out?
• Understand cost/ROI implications?
• Empower teams to resolve them?
• Encourage teams to experiment?
• Communicate impact of finding and removing
impediments?
AgileEvolution_

31. AgileEvolution_

32. The World is Complex
a Learning Organization increases complexity of mind
Evolving identities, comfortable working
with authority of others; seeks meaning,
serves
Identity not tied to particularrole, “the evolving self”
Understand things from many different perspectives
Self-Transforming Mind
Status quo thinking
Responses based on peer or societal pressure
External validation drives sense of self
Social Mind
Question expectations and values
Explore other thoughts and feelings
Fit the narrative – hear and see what’s desired
Self-Authoring Mind
58%
1%
35%
Adapted from Immunity to Change: How to Overcome it… Kegan,
Robert and Lahey, Lisa. HBR Press, 2009.
Social Authoring Transform
AgileEvolution_

34. Impediment Major:
Performance Reviews, Fear, and Maslow
?
AgileEvolution_

35. The MOTHER of all impediments
Fear of Failure:
The Ego Death Star
Are there any impediments that we shouldn’t put on the canvas? Discuss.
AgileEvolution_

36. Value Proposition
The sooner you can turn your culture toward owning
its own impediments, the sooner you can stop hiring
expensive consultants and tools to do so.
AgileEvolution_
The real agile superheros are
the people who chip away at it,
day after day; they stick to it
through tough times to finally
realize emergent change.

37. A couple of noteworthy chapters from our story.
We’ve been co-creating agile
teams, leaders, and organizations
for 15 years.
2003 Primavera Systems
First “invitational” Scrum
organization (pre-empted
Spotify model); subject of Ken
Schwaber’s The Enterprise and
Scrum
2006-2008 Doubleclick
45 Scrum teams, global
distribution
Reduced overhead by 30%
Prepped business for Google
acquisition
2009 Booking.com
Strategic use of Scrum to grow
the organization from niche
getaway reservations to #1
Hotel Reservations site
2014 Neuberger Berman
30 team environment –
products and IT support;
projects to products; significant
improvement of business
relationships
Reduction in TTV by 35%
Countless others: Cisco Systems, Martha Stewart Living, IEEE, JPMC, CapitalOne, Google, Dell, Elsevier, VA, Social Security Administration, Nordea Bank…
AgileEvolution_