Clearing The Road
Your team will be facing roadblocks, challenges and problems, how you deal with that will help them and say what sort of leader you are.
One of the roles that a project manager has is to remove blockers for the team. It is a two-edged sword. If you do a good job, then your team becomes dependent on you. And they lose their ability to problem-solve and get things done. If you don’t do it, then the project cannot progress and gets stuck.
Before we go any further, let’s define blockers and impediments. In most articles, books and videos, these terms are used interchangeably. There is a difference between the two.
A blocker is something that stops the team from progressing. An example is when funding is not available. An impediment is something that slows down a team. For example, when the CI pipeline has issues and the team has to manually check in code and run a smoke test instead of relying on automation.
The next thing is to work out what you should unblock and what you should let the team solve themselves. For blockers or impediments within the control of the team, the team can unblock them. Using the previous example, they can fix the automation on the CI pipeline. If they have challenges, they can reach out to other development teams and technical leads to assist. They have control over that.
There are several ways to identify any blockers or impediments:
Ask questions during daily stand-up or team meetings. These questions may seem simple and too obvious, but you need to trigger the team to explicitly consider them. Questions like:
What could speed up delivery?
Are you blocked?
Is there anything stopping you or slowing you down?
Look for tasks that are stuck in a state for over some time
Look for patterns of recurring delays
Notice when the teams are communicating, either silence or excuses - this means there is something deeper worth digging into
This goes with organising meetings, ordering stationery and any other tasks that the team members can do themselves.
For blockers and impediments outside of the team’s control, as the project manager, this is where you step in to help them. In the example of the funding not being available, this is where you need to escalate to the Sponsor and the Steering Committee to resolve the funding.
You will need to coach your team to identify blockers and impediments, problem solve, figure things out and get things done. Having a process to identify and track blockers and impediments is important. Make sure it’s accessible to everyone and easy to use.
If you run daily stand-ups, they can be a forum to raise blockers and impediments and to review existing ones. But any team member can raise the blocker or impediment at any time, doesn’t need to wait for the daily scrum.
The next step is to understand the impact of the issue. Is it blocking something or slowing the work? Then you need to ask whether it is something the team member can resolve themselves. If it is, then you’ll need to coach them through it.
If it is a blocker or impediment that is outside the team’s control, then take ownership to resolve it.
Resolving impediments requires a vast set of skills that includes active listening, communication skills, analysis, negotiation, influencing, problem solving, stakeholder management, decision making, emotional intelligence, persistence, and follow-through.
Removing roadblocks isn’t a side task - it’s the job. When you clear the path, your team can focus, move faster and build a team that delivers business and customer outcomes. Develop your skills to identify and resolve roadblocks and your leadership skills.
Practice
Take one of the skills listed in the article required to remove roadblocks. Go deep and study it, and develop that skill. Practice it when removing roadblocks for your team.
If you haven’t already, create a blockers section as part of your daily scrum or team meeting. Ask your team the questions from the article to identify roadblocks. Coach your team to resolve them if they’re within their control.
Leave a comment on how well the two practices went. What did you find worked? What didn’t work?
Quote
“Servant leadership is all about making the goals clear and then rolling your sleeves up and doing whatever it takes to help people win. In that situation, they do not work for you; you work for them.” Ken Blanchard (author, business consultant, motivational speaker
Are you willing to roll up your sleeve? Do you risk not seeing the forest because you’re amongst the trees? How do you manage this?
My Resources
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Well written.