Stream Impediments

Stream Impediments are artifacts used by agile teams to tag activities that are beyond their circle of influence, which slow them from completing a task within a predefined time-box.

Stream Impediments are tactical in nature and expose gaps between the team’s ability to convert a work-item into an increment within the constraints of the current operational model.

In ASF, it is encouraged that teams maintain an objective definition of what constitutes an impediment. Ideally, a Stream Impediment is anything that would slow or impede the team from completing work based on a predetermined time-box, and it has an impact on one or more work-items in the Sprint Backlog.

For instance, assume that a team generally completes a task in about six hours, and they want to experiment with an approach to reduce that time to three hours or less. The team then defines a Stream Impediments to be raised by team members when any task takes more than three hours to complete. As they tag their activities during the Sprint, they accumulate data that they can use during the Sprint Retrospective.

Given the importance of Stream Impediments as a transparency tool, it imperative to treat them as value-neutral. To keep stream impediments value-neutral, address any cultural stigma about expressing and highlighting obstacles, and remove financial incentives for surfacing them.