#19 The Story That Halts Progress

Symptom: A story on the sprint backlog takes a long time halting all progress.

Probable Cause: There may be a number of unknowns or external dependencies for this story that may need to be handled individually.

Suggested Resolution: When this happens to an established team it can be quite disruptive to the flow of work and a surprise to the team.

The problem story will need to be resolved if possible, but it may be down to unexpected complexity, an external dependency or something beyond the control of the team.

For unexpected complexity, sometimes this is due to some unknowns and so splitting the story into an investigation part to learn more and an implementation part to do the work may help.

If it is a known area try to break down the story into additional user stories to decompose the problem into manageable chunks that can be easily resolved.

For an external dependency or something beyond the team's control look to defer the story until the dependency is resolved by some action or delivery of a component for example.

For each of these options, reprioritising any new stories may be needed and they may not necessarily be all done in one sprint.

What you are looking for here is to restore the flow of work and this might mean breaking things down a little more to be able to complete them effectively and efficiently.

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