Blockers vs Impediments in stories

[Victor Cheung]

On the STORY form, there is an OOTB checkbox called "Blocked", and we're already using it.  I think a blocker is actually stopping work for continuing.  An impediment could be simply slowing down or impeding work.  They're quite different, and we're wondering if anyone knows how to handle impediment in stories? Any suggestions are greatly appreciated.

[Wesley8]

Victor,

We are working through the same thing right now. We have hybrid projects for some teams and can use project issues to track impediments. We create a story per sprint that tracks impediments to our more agile-focused work. Impediments at a team level are tracked in this impediment story.

I recommend creating a scrum task for story-level impediments and assigning it to someone for any impediment.

On both the story and scrum form, we have a "Type" field, and we are adding a value of "Impediment" in this field. Then, you could query the "Task" table to get a list of all active impediments for a particular team.

I am sure there are other options; however, this is what we are doing.

[Victor Cheung]

This is very helpful. Thanks Wesley!

I see there is another field on story called Classification, which has "Feature" (default) and "Defect" options.  It sounds like a better fit to add the new option "Impediment" in there.  Is there any drawback by doing so?

[Wesley8]

Sure, that would work at the story level.  I don't see classification at the scrum task level.  

We choose to use Enhancements and have the Type field on the Enhancement record that flows to the Story Type field when a story is created for the Enhancements.  We use Enhancements as our product backlog and then use stories as the agile team's sprint backlog.  

I like the classification field, and it might be worth having your SN developers add it to the scrum task form. 

Good luck.