Blowing up blockers

Tom Breur

23 November 2014

Recently, I was blocked in my work because of ongoing issues with my laptop. The screen on my laptop would go black, unexpectedly. Oddly, there didn’t seem to be any pattern, no cause, and despite replacing the disk, and even replacing the entire operating system (and rebuilding my machine), the issue persisted. Intermittently.

My patience level with IT related issues is extremely short. I mean really, really short. As in 1.3 seconds short. So after many trips to the help desk, and a plethora of diagnostic efforts we attempted to reproduce the problem (or even find a cause), we had gotten nowhere. My Monday morning lemon was going back for warranty.

When I checked back a week later, it turned out they hadn’t returned my machine, yet, because it required a special trip to the repair shop. Since this lack of a fully functional machine was seriously hampering my productivity, I now had a choice: wait for IT to solve this, or take matters in my own hand, and go return the device myself.

Impediments, or blockers, are “traditionally” the purview of your Scrum master. But there is no “law” against anybody applying the law of two feet: getting up and moving yourself to a place you want to go. I thought about my laptop warranty issue briefly, and then realized that although going to the repair shop might seem a “waste” of my time, waiting (and the uncertainty) for this to resolve “itself” was a waste, too.

One of the beauties of Scrum is that it helps the entire team focus day in and day out on what the collective impediments are, and what you can do, yourself (!), to overcome those. After the standup you can reach out to a colleague and offer your help. Or point to resources. This is where swarming helps the team move forward. Or you can decide to just blow up the blocker yourself.

I wound up having to take a few more trips to the repair shop, but at last I have a properly working machine, with all my favorite tools – I’m moving right ahead!