Update : the slides from Sarah’s presentation are available! Software development mythology insists that a Blocked column is needed for the inevitable impediment. Why? Does it help our teams optimize process and reduce waste? I’ll show you how the Blocked column negatively impacts your team morale, increases waste, and skews metrics. Do you believe in the Blocked column myth? It haunts most scrum or Kanban boards, but why do we have this column? What value does it provide? The Toyota Way teaches us to visualize our workflow and reduce waste. Does the blocked column on our boards reflect those principles? I will prove that the blocked column is detrimental to your team. This session questions the reasons behind our reliance on a blocked column, and what happens after tasks move there. We will explore the blocked column from multiple perspectives, including psychology, user experience, lean principles, and metrics. Finally, I’ll offer alternative ways to track blocked items that align with the Lean principles.
Technical Project Manager - Cerner
Sarah is a data-driven, process improvement, and true-agile convert! As a Technical Project Manager in Cerner’s development PMO, she has worked with a lot of teams on agile projects and seen it all. As she’s transitioned over to Kanban and studied the Toyota Principles, she’s come to appreciate efficiency and flow and started looking at ways to improve her team’s process. She doesn’t know who the members of One Direction are, but she loves P!NK and is currently forced to listen to the Trolls soundtrack on repeat to appease the twin three-year olds she has at home.