It is very common for people moving to Scrum, not to be able to recognize Impediment in the first place, this is given to a set of constraint in which these people have been used to work in. Habits are really hard to change, and here is where the good Scrum Master, thinking out of the box, can start inspecting and checking on a daily basis what is slowing down the team. If you ask the question: “Do you have any new Impediment to report?” and the team member answers: “No...” then: make sure she is on time with the committed task (a delay may hide an impediment, as why) make sure she has not committed to more than 2 tasks at the same time (she is probably blocked waiting for someone else to complete, maybe outside the team) make sure she is reporting in detail and specifically what she achieved since the last meeting make sure she is having a trustable body language and position in the Team respect think if the way the Team chosen to accomplish the Sprint objectives is the fastest and most straightforward, eventually stimulate them to think out of the box and Inspect & Adapt.

1. IMPEDIMENTS IN SCRUM
Overview

2. Impediments
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Impediment: anything that slows down, distracts, interrupts the team or a team member while performing activities aiming to reach the Sprint goal
Personal Impediment
Team Impediment
Organizational Impediment

3. Why is it important that we raise impediments? Why don't team members raise impediments? How can we overcome these issues?
"I Have No Impediments"

4. IMPORTANCE
Impediments are very important in Scrum Productivity can be improved by working and resolving these problems

5. The Scrum Impediment Cycle
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Capture
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Track
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Triage
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Resolve
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Report
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Learn

6. Examples of Organizational Impediments
Silver bullet thinking and superficial adoption
Assuming Agile Is All About Developers
Unrealistic Promises
Assumption that Book Learning is Enough
Local vs Global Optimization
Single-Function Groups
Lack of Training
Misguided Cost Savings and Synergy Efforts
Failure to Remove Organizational Impediments

7. Typical impediments to keep a careful eye on
Broken builds
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Issues with the ‘tools of the trade’
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Other projects
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Unplanned company events
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Unreliable supplier / 3 party
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Ungroomed product backlog
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Absent product owner holding up key decisions

8. Your examples of IMPEDIMENTS

9. Scrum Master and Impediments

Scrum Master remove impediments or coach teams into removing them?
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As part of coaching of scrum teams, when an impediment crops up, Scrum Master should help the team find their own way to remove the impediment

10. References
http://www.scrumshortcuts.com/blog/planning-metrics/implicating-impediments/ http://www.scrumalliance.org/articles/409-i-have-no-impediments http://www.scrumshortcuts.com/blog/planning-metrics/scrum- metrics and-reporting-measure-what-you-manage/

11. Contacts
Francesco Attanasio Mail: francesco.attanasio@yahoo.it Twitter: LeanScrumMaster