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Does SM remove impediments or cause them to be removed?

Last post 07:58 am April 2, 2023 by Joseph Abayomi Ajayi
4 replies
06:24 am March 28, 2023

According to scrum guide; The Scrum Master serves the Scrum Team in several ways and one of them is: Causing the removal of impediments to the Scrum Team’s progress. Here, instead of saying "removing", "causing the removal" is preferred. SM teaches people how to do things, supports, facilitates, etc. Therefore, the phrase "causing the removal..." is correct, but in one of the scrum.org assessment questions "removing the impediments" is considered correct as the SM's way of serving. I think there is a mistake here. At least the correct answer should be changed from "removing the impediments" to "causing the removal of impediments". These are different and this difference is important. What do you think?


05:11 pm March 28, 2023

Did the assessment ask you to choose the correct answer or the best one of those which are available?


05:22 pm March 28, 2023

Asked the best two options.


07:02 pm March 30, 2023

I think question is if SM CAN remove certain impediments?

If SM can-he should, but of course SM is not a God and cant remove all of them

So he or she can  try create a circumstance which will remove impediments...


07:58 am April 2, 2023

@Orzan, it is important to define what exactly is an impediment and this could be anything, situation, issue, circumstances etc that exceeds the self-organizing capabilities of the (Team /Developer) and these could be related to organisational impediments, team conflicts, skill shortages, dependencies, sickness of a team member etc. and this is the only time in my opinion when the SM can step in to help remove the impediments.  

The given examples of possible impediments don't have to be impediments until the (Team /Developer) have exhausted to their limits in resolving the issue. "An impediment in Scrum is a factor that blocks the Developers in their creation of a valuable piece of software in a Sprint, or that restricts the team in achieving its intrinsic level of progress."  [Scrum a Pocket Guide]

According to Barry Overeem,  "A Scrum Master should create an environment where the Developers feel safe to raise impediments. Respecting the self-organizing capabilities of the team, the Scrum Master should encourage the team in trying to solve their own problems. Or even better, preventing something to become an impediment at all."

You can read further on the Six stances of a Scrum Master which includes an impediment remover from Barry Overeem

https://medium.com/the-liberators/the-6-stances-of-a-scrum-master-a0f0666b95

"At least the correct answer should be changed from "removing the impediments" to "causing the removal of impediments". These are different and this difference is important. What do you think?" 

The SM can help to remove impediments and at the same time facilitate the removal of impediments both are logically correct. 


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