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What if…teams resolved their own impediments?

When agile teams hear the word "impediment" or “blocker” they almost always think of a Scrum Master. That's to be expected really as from the day the role was created, one of the key responsibilities of a Scrum Master was to ensure any blockers to team effectiveness and value delivery are removed.

In great teams, however, this isn't something that is solely thought of as a Scrum Master responsibility. Great teams strive to resolve their own impediments.

The benefits of resolving our own impediments

There are many rewards for teams that proactively resolve their own impediments. Not only do they get more valuable work done quicker, but they also feel greater satisfaction from it.

They no longer feel helpless and a victim within an organisational bureaucracy, but rather agents of change, creating the organisation that they feel is needed.

As well as a greater sense of motivation, engagement, and ownership within the team, there is also a benefit to the wider organisation of streamlined effectiveness, allowing dedicated change agents or team coaches to spend more time on other aspects of organisational change.

It can be scary

It’s very easy for people like me to say “ask for forgiveness not permission and just get on with it”, but it’s not as simple as that in most cases.

Often a lot of things that are holding a team back from being more proactive and stepping into greater levels of autonomy is fear.

Now some of that fear is quite valid - there may be a concern that they might not get things right and may be there is a worry they might make things worse.

Another risk is that a team may optimise at the local level, rather than at the systems level, simply because of what is visible to them. In other words, resolving an impediment for them could create an impediment elsewhere. If this needs to be rolled back, then the demotivation can be great.

There can also be a fear that they overstep the mark and create a bit of unrest or maybe even cause some serious repercussions.

Fear is quite normal and serves as a self-defence mechanism in my experience there are just as many times when the fear is more in our minds than based in reality.

No matter how much the fear is real or perceived, there are things you can do as a team to help step into that proactive stance.

Tools to help

Set your Fears

Having a structured approach to identifying, analysing and then mitigating the fears we have or risks we see can be all we need to make taking action a lot easier. Start by writing down all of the risks you can think of and then, one by one, ask:

• How likely is it to become reality?

• What can we do now to reduce that risk?

• How can we prepare ourselves in case it does happen?

• How could we reframe this risk?

Sphere of Control

Another limiting factor to team’s being more proactive is the extent of their sphere of control.

Following on from the fear setting exercise, great teams tend to ask themselves "What can we do about this?" and focus on what is within their sphere of control while simultaneously looking to expand that sphere.

I’ve seen so many situations where a team assumes they have less control over their environment than they actually do so great teams also ask questions like "If we had more power than we assume we have, what would we do?"

Map the System

I mentioned the risk of local sub-optimisations and creating problems elsewhere by solving things just for ourselves.

Simply mapping out where we are in the bigger picture and who else might be affected by what we plan to do can help avoid unfortunate unintended consequences. Another side benefit of this is that it can help us identify allies or partners who can also benefit from changes we are looking to make.

While there are risks involved in a team resolving their own impediments, the rewards can be significant, both for the team and the wider organisation. For more information on this topic check out this link.

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