As a follow up to my previous posts and the issues we’re dealing with on my current project let’s look at how we’re dealing with blockers.
First of all what are blockers? Things that prevent me from doing my work and moving the ball forward, things that make me waste the clients time and money. As of late there are a couple that have managed to sneak in and we’ve not dealt with them effectively. They weren’t blocking any high priority tasks but it is a somewhat unsettling trend. Perhaps that is why the visibility was so low, they were just flying under the radar.
During the standup we all say our piece followed by “no blockers” or “I am blocked by…” (Stating “no blockers” at the end of your update is a bit of a smell to me, it smells of agile implemented as a control mechanism but that’s a post for another day) So how is it than that we have issues that remain unresolved for extended periods of time? The must be a disconnect somewhere. The problem is that blockers were not assigned an owner. Lack of ownership is an issue we learned to deal with quickly.
Soon enough when a team member reported a blocker we started noting it on a sticky, and placed it in a column on the wall dedicated to blockers. We found that an approach that works reasonably well is having a team member own the issue. Just ask for volunteers during the standup! An expected resolution date associated with the item also helps drive the resolution or further escalation. At the end of the standup when everyone has given their update we go through the blockers and deal with them on a case by case basis. Obviously if discussions are taking a long time you can take it off line with a couple of teammates. We found that the increased visibility and daily attention helped us deal with various issues effectively and keep the dev machine from grinding to a halt.
We found that when dealing with blockers what works best is increasing visibility and ownership of the issue. Taking control of your blockers really helps to keep the project moving and it gives an tremendous opportunity to deal with tough issues early and effectively.