Our Company Impediments Wall Went Virtual
Our new reality forced us to adapt and more people attend than ever!
Our new reality forced us to adapt and more people attend than ever!
Two years ago I published an article about our Company Impediments Wall:
Our Company Impediments Wall
How we increase cohesion and enable faster improvementmedium.com
I described how the wall and the accompanying get-togethers it helped us to resolve impediments and improve cohesion. Two years later this event still is as powerful. However, this physical wall became out of reach when needed to work from home due to the COVID-19 crisis.
Impediments didn’t disappear. The sudden change in how teams collaborate caused all kinds of new issues and impediments, like:
We needed to look for alternatives for whiteboards and sticky notes;
We faced issues with extensive use of our remote connection;
Our service desk became overwhelmed with requests.
To accommodate this, we decided to create a virtual Impediments Wall in Trello (text is intentionally blurred):
We continued our rhythm of twice a week Impediment Wall sessions. The meeting became virtual.
Initially, our colleagues needed to get used to the idea of a remote session to discuss impediments. We saw a dramatic drop in attendants. People had their hands full to get used to a new normal. They didn’t have time to look beyond the borders of their team. After two weeks, the attention rate of the impediment wall session rose. More people are attending now than when we were at the office.
Many teams have impediments they can’t resolve without help from people outside of the team. The Impediment Wall is a great tool to solve them with a cross-section of the company. On top of that, it helps autonomous teams to align with the rest of the company. We need this more than ever now that we work in a virtual environment.