Abstract
Context: Impediments are blockers that prevent teams from working efficiently and achieving their goals. They are central to the continuous improvement of agile teams. However, common agile methods like Scrum only provide limited guidance on how to handle impediments. Hence, agile teams develop individual ways of impediment management and would benefit from understanding overall aspects that need to be considered as well as from insights into the approaches of other practitioners. Objective: This study seeks to solidify and enhance the understanding of how agile teams identify, document, and resolve impediments in practice. Method: Based on an earlier interview study, an online survey was conducted that collected the experiences of 26 participants from the agile community. Results: The results provide a quantitative overview of the different ways teams identify, document, and finally track/resolve impediments. Based on this, the underlying impediment management process has been enriched and additional insights were gathered. Conclusions: The process and survey results are expected to aid practitioners in defining their own approaches for handling impediments and provide an overview of the various options found in practice.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
References
VersionOne, & Collabnet: 14th State of Agile Report (2020). https://explore.digital.ai/state-of-agile/14th-annual-state-of-agile-report. Accessed 10 July 2020
Manifesto for Agile Software Development (2020). www.agilemanifesto.org. Accessed 10 July 2020
Sutherland, J., Schwaber, K.: The Scrum Guide. The definitive guide to scrum: The rules of the game. Scrum.org (2013)
Diebold, P., Ostberg, J.P., Wagner, S., Zendler, U.: What do practitioners vary in using scrum? In: Lassenius, C., Dingsøyr, T., Paasivaara, M. (eds.) Agile Processes in Software Engineering and Extreme Programming. XP 2015. Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing, vol. 212, pp. 40–51. Springer, Cham (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-18612-2_4
Theobald, S., Schmitt, A., Diebold, P.: Comparing scaling agile frameworks based on underlying practices. In: Hoda, R. (eds.) Agile Processes in Software Engineering and Extreme Programming – Workshops. XP 2019. Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing, vol. 364, pp. 88–96. Springer, Cham (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-30126-2_11
Guckenbiehl, P., Theobald, S.: Impediment management of agile software development teams. In: Morisio, M., Torchiano, M., Jedlitschka, A. (eds.) PROFES 2020. LNCS, vol. 12562, pp. 53–68. Springer, Cham (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-64148-1_4
Wiklund, K., et al.: Impediments in agile software development – an empirical investigation. In: Proceedings PROFES 2013, pp. 35–49. Paphos (2013)
Power, K., Conboy, K.: Impediments to flow – rethinking the lean concept of ‘waste’ in modern software development. In: LNBIP 179, pp. 203–207. Rome (2014)
Power, K.: Impediment impact diagrams – understanding the impact of impediments in agile teams and organizations. In: Proceedings Agile Conference 2014, pp. 41–51. Kissimmee (2014)
Lárusdóttir, M.K., Cajander, Å., Simader, M.: Continuous improvement in agile development practice. In: Sauer, S., Bogdan, C., Forbrig, P., Bernhaupt, R., Winckler, M. (eds.) HCSE 2014. LNCS, vol. 8742, pp. 57–72. Springer, Heidelberg (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-44811-3_4
Carroll, N., O’Connor, M., Edison, H.: The identification and classification of impediments in software flow. In: Proceedings AMCIS 2018, pp. 1–10. New Orleans (2018)
Alahyari, H., Gorschek, T., Svensson, R.: An exploratory study of waste in software development organizations using agile or lean approaches – a multiple case study at 14 organizations. Inf. Softw. Technol. 105, 78–94 (2018)
Power, K.: Improving Flow in Large Software Product Development Organizations – A Sensemaking and Complex Adaptive Systems Perspective. NUI Galway, Galway (2019)
Perry, T.L.: The Little Book of Impediments (2016). http://leanpub.com/ImpedimentsBook
Schenkel, M.: t2informatik GmbH: Impediment Guide (2018). https://t2informatik.de/downloads/impediment-guide/
Linders, B.: Problem? What Problem? Dealing Effectively with Impediments using Agile Thinking and Practices (2020). http://leanpub.com/agileimpediments
Acknowledgments
This research is funded by the German Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) as part of a Software Campus project (01IS17047). We would like to thank all participants of our study, and Sonnhild Namingha for proofreading parts of this paper.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2021 Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this paper
Cite this paper
Theobald, S., Guckenbiehl, P. (2021). How Do Agile Teams Manage Impediments?. In: Ardito, L., Jedlitschka, A., Morisio, M., Torchiano, M. (eds) Product-Focused Software Process Improvement. PROFES 2021. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 13126. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-91452-3_4
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-91452-3_4
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-91451-6
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-91452-3
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)