The Poor Neglected Impediment
I wrote a book a few years ago about dealing with impediments on agile teams. It’s right there on the upper right of the page (I’ll give you a minute to make your purchase). Well, the industry has continued on since those heady young days, and two things are still true: people still underestimate the impact of impediments, and impediments are bigger than ever.
Where agile was largely a team level affair not much more than a few years ago, now it is much bigger. Scaling is all the rage. Now we work in teams of teams or in things called release trains. Entire divisions of major corporations undergo mind-bending enormous agile transformations. We now have many different kinds of frameworks that we can use when making those transformations. One of the most popular is SAFe. If you haven’t seen it before, you should check it out scaledagileframework.com
The first thing you will see is the “Big Picture.” It is an enormous diagram that attempts to portray all of the processes and practices that you can apply to use the framework. They’re not joking about the ‘Big’ part either. That diagram is downright intimidating. Go ahead, grab a magnifying glass (you’re going to need it) and let’s take a closer look. You see all sorts of things that we are familiar with in the agile world in that picture: user stories, features, scrum, kanban. All of my favorite technical words are in there. It’s a process management smorgasbord! Did you notice anything missing in that diagram? I don’t know about you, but it seems like they threw in everything but the kitchen sink! Oh…wait…hold on a second…where are the…impediments!
THEY FORGOT ABOUT IMPEDIMENTS!
I’m outraged! Shocked! Shocked I tell you! The nerve of some people. Oh, I’m sure they make some passing mention of impediments deep in the smelly bowels of their documentation. Someplace dark, where no one will find it. Impediments are certainly not a first-class citizen in SAFe’s world. I’m so depressed. Well, I guess that’s it: SAFe sucks.
But then again, If I go look at some of the other scaling frameworks, surely, THEY will have impediments, right? Let’s go take a peek at LeSS (less.works). AAAAARRGH! Again, no impediments! But…maybe one of those more disciplined frameworks like DaD (Disciplined Agile Delivery) will make some passing reference to impediments. OH NO! Not again! None of these frameworks makes mention of impediments. They all suck.
Well, fine. Be that way. Go ahead. Ignore impediments (You fools!) See how far you get. I’m not bitter. Go ahead, call me when your precious value streams are tied up in knots. When your teams are blocked from delivering to production. You see, now, perhaps more than ever, impediments are increasingly relevant, especially when we start talking about scaled agile development. Risk management doesn’t go away just because your agile got bigger.
In all seriousness, I think that it’s worth considering where risk management does fit in the popular agile frameworks (or perhaps why it doesn’t). All too frequently I think it is lost. To some degree that is not a surprise. Many of these frameworks are so top heavy with processes and practices that it’s a miracle they don’t collapse under their own weight. Why pile on yet one more practice to the mountain that is already there? It’s just one tiny little process. Wafer thin mint anyone?
Alternatively, perhaps it’s time some of those frameworks went on a bit of a diet. And rather than trying to cram in the latest fad like continuous delivery, devOPS, etc. perhaps we should toss out a few things and try a little risk management. It could be a real lifesaver.
#SAFe #LeSS #impedimentsbook #Agile #DaD #Scaling #Impediments #scaledagile