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How Do We Setup An Organizational Impediment Removal System? - SSA
One of the key roles of the manager or leader is to remove impediments to the flow of value. Impediments are defined as “anything that slows down the delivery of value”. Removing impediments means value is delivered faster to the customer. It also frees up capacity of the organization to work on what is important.
If just want to start something right now that will head you in the right direction, walk up to your people and ask “What impediments are you seeing right now?” Volunteer to take one of the impediments on (ie “pull” it), and work to resolve it. If your people are not able to tell you about their impediments, you might want to refer to the section below.
But to be fair, to be effective in the long run, you need to set up systematic approach to identifying, capturing and working impediments. This will involve structuring a process where, for example, impediments that are recognized by a Team, but cannot be dealt with by that Team, are escalated to someone who can do something about it.
Organizations typically set up “impediment” Kanban boards to track the resolution of impediments. This makes the process transparent and helps to set expectations. Working agreements are established around these Kanban boards - who does what and how often - so people can engage effectively. Metrics track both the outcomes and the work required to remove impediments.
Let’s dig into some of these ideas a little deeper.
Why Have an Organizational Impediment Removal System?
“Work smarter; not harder”
But how exactly do you do this? It turns out there are a lot of ways to do this, but one of the best ways is to focus on removing things that slow the delivery of value down - impediments - across all the entire organization.
To understand why, consider that when people map out how they deliver value to their customers (a process called “Value Stream Mapping”) they find that their process efficiency is very poor. Process efficiency is calculated by dividing the value-added time associated with a process by the total lead time of the process.
Process Efficiency = Value-Added-Time / Lead Time
When you learn that process efficiency for IT systems is typically below 15% (that’s right; only 15% value added work!) you can see that if we focus on removing the 85% of waste time, we can speed up delivery to our customers dramatically.
Impediments are defined as “anything that will slow the delivery of value down.” Impediments are part of the overall system of delivery. They are often the result of “that’s just how things get done ‘round here“:
- Some are localized in nature and the Team can work them because they have the information and ability. For example, perhaps a Team has identified a “blocker” (the way work management tools often refer to impediments) whereby they need an approval to have access to a server, and there is a good relationship between the Team members and the person who provides access.
- Some are more systematic and will need a group of people from multiple domains to address. For example, perhaps there is a complicated process to release the solution to the customer which came about as a result of fears of bringing the system down.
Irrespective, it is the role of management to help Teams to deliver value by removing impediments. To do this they need to ensure that there is an impediment system in place aimed at working and removing impediments that have been identified by the organization.
What Are the Benefits of an Impediment Removal System?
There are a number of benefits to having an impediment removal system.
The first, and most obvious, benefit is that you should see the faster delivery of value to customers as a result of removing impediments. This is the direct result of the focus on improving process efficiency, resulting in reduced lead time for the customer and faster cycle time. These benefits typically compound; improve by 5% today, another 5% tomorrow and the effect is a 10.25% improvement overall, not just 10% (see How Do Small Changes Lead to Big Improvements? for further discussion). And as you remove impediments you will also free up capacity of your Teams to do valuable work; no longer do they have to waste time as a result of the impediment.
In addition, you should find that as an organization, you will improve how quickly you can improve. There will always be another systematic impediment. The focus on impediments will allow you to improve your ability to respond.
And finally, there is a soft benefit. This is how managers, supervisors, and leaders really help Teams, and so positions these roles in the overall delivery system. Teams will see the benefit of working with managers resulting in a virtuous cycle of constant engagement and improvement.
How Do You Become Aware of Impediments?
There are lots of potential sources for impediments, depending on the situation you find yourself in.
At the most basic level, Teams are encouraged to track things that slow them down. There are two main sources impediments:
- Tooling will provide for a “Blocker” tag, which the Team will use to signify that there is a problem progressing that particular work item. These will often be discussed at the Daily meeting, and can be identified at any time.
- Retrospective ceremonies aimed at Team improvement will often result in an understanding of something that slows the work down.
In most cases, Teams should be able to work these items themselves. But some issues will be more thorny, more political, more ingrained. In effect these items need to be “escalated”. This is where leadership needs to step in and take responsibility for working the impediment.
What happens with impediments that the Team cannot address will vary depending on context:
- If the Team works to deliver value by itself, then management associated with the Team takes these impediments on directly.
- If the Team operates as part of a Program (a Team-of-Teams) then the first level of escalation for Team impediments is to the Program Team to see if it can be addressed at that level.
This pattern repeats. The Program Team will also track Program level “Blockers” and operate Retrospective ceremonies (sometimes called an “Inspect and Adapt”) where Program level impediments are surfaced. Items that the Program Team cannot work are either escalated to the, say, Portfolio level (if there is one) or is worked directly by relevant management.
Another source of impediments is specific events aimed at improvement. For example, some organizations set up specific Kaizen events aimed at stepping back from the day-to-day work of the organization, to really work systematic improvements. Other organizations use Value Stream Mapping events to really help focus. And, over time, there will just be an increasing awareness of the things that are slowing things down.
No matter what the source we need to be careful about setting up a slow, cumbersome bureaucracy to address the discovered impediment. Speed of response is of the essence here.