YDS: How Does a Scrum Master Help a Blocked Scrum Team?

Barbara sent in a question asking what to do when, as a Scrum Master, when the Scrum Team is blocked by an impediment. The most critical piece of advice we give in this situation is this: A Scrum Master has ZERO tolerance for organizational impediments. Period. End of sentence. Watch the video to see how Todd and Ryan unpack that straightforward piece of advice. Want to learn more about Scrum?

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[zenexmachina]

This is a great into for Scrum Masters on what "blocked" truly means and what a Scrum Master should be doing to help Developers create value for their Product Owner. Getting the PO involved in bringing the problem to someone (like a higher level manager) who can actually do something about it (when the team itself can't) is critical.

[madzero]

I agree with the "show how much it costs" part. Make this visable for everyone. Hang up a picture of a car with above it a signs that says:" Not having the right tools costed us so far:". First you have a small car but that Pinto is growing into a Mustang, becomming an F150 Raptor and then a Porsche 911. People will get nervous when they see that.

[dar]

Can you make a video of most common impediments? And what the steps are for the SM?

[laper]

Brilliant videos. I'm listening to every one of them as I prepare for my PSM exam. however, the closing is almost 1 minute every video. Can it be reduced to 20-30 seconds?

[Rekettyelovag]

Now imagine having the same problem but in a 3rd party company where teams try to work on a 20-year-old product, but they can't have access to every part of the code, can't work effectively because the test infrastructure is balls, have 40gigs of stuff in source control, have 1000+ people working on a big monolith, distributed IT and other organizational levels all having their own subset of "responsibility", full throttle feature push, no budget for anything, non-agile hour based contract every quarter, and the constant fear of "too much transparency" as they don't know whether the parent company reduces them (happened before) if they speak up about our problems or try to solve them. etc.

//IMO the best place for every scrum master as they need to use all the creativity they have

[navneetsekhon]

What would you do if your organization is OK with work Not being completed in Sprint and it’s a norm to carryover work from one Sprint to next Sptint to next Sprint and so forth.
It’s not because of the blocks/ or impediments, it’s because stories are in Resolved and needing testing or peer review.
How do you address this and commit to what we planned.

[dcn]

If I get my first SM job (via internal transfer) soon. My initial plan is to get to know the team, assess their practices and delve into how well they feel they are working with scrum and the value they get out of each ceremony, not jump in and shouting agile and scrum theory from day one lol. What advice would you give for 1st SM job and early integration with established teams. (I'm coming from tech leadership in networks and have always built autonomous teams and leveraged relationships to enable the teams and overcome issues.. Been an SM without knowing it lol)

[scrummaster]

What do you guys do when a team continually has a low velocity and despite helping them work through impediments it seems that there is really no push from anywhere in the organization to get epics completed. New to my org and just trying to figure out the best way to be a team player but also realize I cannot force anyone to do anything.

[teregiven]

Todd, I noticed your use of "potentially releasable" when talking about the Sprint increment - taking me back to the 2017 Guide. I think the new one says "usable". For clarification, is the 2020 verbiage just intended to be more inclusive of non-software development environments (e.g. HR, Mktg)? And that at the heart that increment is still expected to be in use for feedback following Sprint end? For the last couple of months I softened a little because the language changed but I think I'm short changing empirical process control by using a poor definition of usable.
For context: I'm in a Mktg environment, and no teams were harmed by my divergence.

[toyinoluwatoyinangel]

As a Scrum Master, what would you do when the Scrum Team does not like your ideas and instead suggest new ones?