MSF for Agile Software Development

Impediments

Impediment

 

Overview

An impediment defines a risk, an event or issue that negatively impacts the solution team and that therefore can have a potential negative outcome on the project. Teams that are proactive in risk management and documentation of impediments will be able to successfully identify and address impediments early in the solution cycle, positively impacting the overall ecosystem and delivery of the solution.

 

States and Transitions


New


An impediment is new when it is first created.  Create a new impediment when work has been identified from either the user stories or another source.


New to Active

 

Investigate

An impediment may be assigned to a team member for validation or analysis before it is assigned to a sprint.

Accepted

An impediment may be made active when it has been validated and assigned to a team member for mitigation.


Active


An impediment is active when it has been reviewed by the scrum master and team and has been targeted for further analysis or has been accepted as a valid problem for the project.


Active to Closed

Overtaken

An impediment may be closed if the item has been overtaken by events in the project.

Duplicate

An impediment may be closed if the item is the duplicate of another impediment.

Postponed

An impediment may be closed if the project team decides to postpone the mitigation.

Removed

An impediment may be closed if it has been removed from the project backlog.


Active to Resolved

Complete (No Verification)

An impediment may be marked as resolved once the work has been completed and may or may not need to be verified.

Complete (Requires Verification)

A impediment may be marked as resolved once the work has been completed and may or may not need to be verified.


Resolved


An impediment is resolved when the problem that it specified has been mitigated but not yet tested or  reviewed.


Resolved to Active

Verification Failed

An impediment may need to be reactivated if verification of the problem mitigation is not successful.


Resolved to Closed

Verified

A impediment may be closed once the problem mitigation has been successfully verified.


Closed


An impediment is closed when the problem that it specifies has either been completed or is no longer an issue for the the project.


Closed to Active

Reactivated

An impediment may need to be reactivated for a variety of reasons.

Closed in Error

An impediment may have been closed by accident and need to be reopened.


Fields

Title

Required. The title provides a concise description of the impediment. The title should be descriptive enough to allow the team to understand what the potential impediment is.

Area

The area is used to group the impediment into an appropriate feature or team area. The area must be a valid node in the project hierarchy.

Sprint

The iteration in which the impediment could occur.

Assigned To

The current person that impediment is assigned to. Generally, it is a scrum master but may be any of the project team members.

Priority

The importance of the impediment to the project team.  Higher priority impediments should be dealt with first.

Triage

The status of the evaluation of the impediment for validity.  Impediments are triaged by scrum masters or team members before they are assigned to an Active state.  An impediment may have a triage value of  "Pending", "More Info", "Info Recv" or "Triage". 

State

Required.  Used to determine the status of the impediment in its lifecycle.  An impediment can be in the New,  Active, Resolved or Closed states.

Reason

The reason an impediment is in the current state.

Description

This field provides a description of the impediment, any project exposure, and potential mitigations.

History

The history field contains the set of changes to the work item.

Links

Links to related work items, hyperlinks, changesets, or source code files.

Attachments

Attach related files providing additional documentation around the impediment.

 

 

     

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