| Course | MT247 Agile and Scrum Methodologies |
|---|---|
| Unit | Unit 8 |
| Paper type | Impediment analysis |
| Length | About 900 words, 6 pages double-spaced |
| Format | APA 7 student paper |
| School | Purdue University Global |
| Program | BS in Business Administration |
| Updated | October 2026 |
Free sample paper for MT247 Unit 8
Twelve Days Inside, Twenty and a Half Outside: A Unit 8 Impediment Analysis of Three Missed Sprint Goals
[Student Name]
Purdue University Global
MT247: Agile and Scrum Methodologies
Unit 8 Impediment Analysis
[Instructor Name]
[Date]
Larkspur Residential, its app team, departments and every figure are composite and illustrative; the sources cited are real.
The Claim and the Evidence
After the team missed its Sprint Goal in Sprints 12, 13 and 14, the development manager told the vice president that the Developers needed more discipline. This analysis tests that claim against the team's own impediment log, which the Developers have kept since Sprint 12, recording each obstacle, how often it occurred, how many developer-days it cost and who could remove it.
Lost days are estimates, made by the Developer affected at the time and checked against the team board. They are approximate to half a day. The three Sprints had 150 developer-days available in total, five Developers over thirty working days.
The Impediment Log
Inside the team, four impediments:
Pull requests waiting more than a day for review: 11 occurrences; 4.5 days lost; evidence, review timestamps; removable by the Developers
Stories started without acceptance criteria: 6 occurrences; 3.5 days lost; evidence, rework notes; removable by the Developers and Product Owner together at refinement
Automated tests skipped and later reworked: 5 occurrences; 2.5 days lost; evidence, failed builds; removable by the Developers
More than three items in progress at once: frequent; 1.5 days lost; evidence, board snapshots; removable by the Developers
Outside the team, five impediments:
Vice president adding work mid-Sprint: 7 occurrences; 7 days lost; evidence, emails and backlog history; removable by the vice president
The security office's review of every store submission: 3 occurrences; 5.5 days lost waiting; evidence, ticket dates; removable by the security director
Production data access only by ticket to another department: 9 occurrences; 3.5 days lost; evidence, ticket dates; removable by the IT operations director
Legal sign-off on resident-facing wording: 4 occurrences; 2.5 days lost; evidence, email threads; removable by legal counsel
Product Owner decision overruled after planning: 2 occurrences; 2 days lost; evidence, emails; removable by the vice president
Total lost: 32.5 developer-days of 150, or 21.7 percent. Inside: 12 days, 8 percent of capacity. Outside: 20.5 days, 13.7 percent.
Testing the Claim
The manager's claim is partly right. Twelve developer-days were lost to habits the team controls, and those are worth fixing. But nearly two-thirds of the lost time came from decisions made outside the team, and the largest single impediment, the vice president's mid-Sprint additions, cost more than any internal one and more than half of all internal losses together. More discipline from the Developers would not have recovered those seven days, because the work that displaced the Sprint Goal came from above.
Poppendieck and Poppendieck (2003) argue that most delays in software work come from waiting, handoffs and work added out of order, which are features of the system the team sits in rather than of individual effort. Larkspur's log fits that view.
The team was told to try harder at a problem it did not cause.
What Each Sprint Lost
The losses were not spread evenly. Sprint 12 lost about 9 developer-days, mostly to review waits and a security review that took six days instead of the usual four. Sprint 13 lost about 13, the worst of the three, when the vice president added two requests in the first week and a decision the Product Owner made at planning was overruled. Sprint 14 lost about 10.5, split between data access tickets and legal sign-off on the new notification wording. In each Sprint, the Sprint Goal was missed in the same week that an outside impediment struck, which is the pattern a discipline problem would not produce.
Partly Inside, Partly Outside
Some impediments mix both. Stories started without acceptance criteria are partly the Developers' habit of starting before asking, and partly the Product Owner's limited time to refine items, which itself traces to the vice president's overrides making refinement feel pointless. The log places it inside the team because the Developers and Product Owner can fix it together at refinement, but the analysis notes the outside cause.
Remedies Inside the Team
The Developers agreed to four changes: a rule that any pull request waiting four hours is reviewed before new work is started; no story starts without acceptance criteria agreed at refinement; automated tests run on every commit and a failed build stops new work; and a limit of three items in progress, shown on the board. These cost nothing outside the team and could recover most of the 12 days.
Remedies Outside the Team
The Scrum Guide gives the Scrum Master the job of causing the removal of impediments to the team's progress (Schwaber & Sutherland, 2020). That does not mean the Scrum Master removes them personally; for the five outside impediments, the Scrum Master's job is to take the evidence to the person who can. The analysis recommends a single meeting with the vice president to agree that new requests go to the Product Owner, a request to the security director for a standing review slot every two weeks, a read-only production data view from IT operations, and a library of pre-approved resident wording from legal. Rubin (2012) notes that organizational impediments are the hardest to remove and the most valuable, because they affect every Sprint.
References
Poppendieck, M., & Poppendieck, T. (2003). Lean software development: An agile toolkit. Addison-Wesley.
Rubin, K. S. (2012). Essential Scrum: A practical guide to the most popular agile process. Addison-Wesley.
Schwaber, K., & Sutherland, J. (2020). The Scrum guide. https://scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html
The Purdue Global MT247 Unit 8 instructions
The eighth unit asks students to analyze what is slowing a team, using a log of impediments rather than opinion. For each impediment, record how often it occurred, how much time it cost, the evidence and who can remove it. Sort impediments into those the team controls and those only someone outside can change, and note any that mix both. The prompt usually expects a test of a stated explanation, such as a claim about discipline, and remedies assigned by category. Remember that the Scrum Master causes impediments to be removed but need not remove them personally. Five pages in APA 7, built around one log, is typical, with lost-time figures labeled as estimates.
How the MT 247 Unit 8 example is put together
The analysis states the manager's claim and how the log was kept, with lost days approximate to half a day. The log lists four internal and five external impediments with occurrences, days lost, evidence and who can remove each, under a margin note on turning complaints into assignments. Totals give 12 days inside and 20.5 outside. A section tests the claim, citing Poppendieck and Poppendieck, with the highlighted line on a team told to try harder. A Sprint-by-Sprint breakdown ties each missed goal to an outside blow. A section treats missing acceptance criteria as partly both. Internal remedies follow, then external ones with the Scrum Guide and Rubin, under a closing note.
Where the points sit in the MT247 Unit 8 rubric
Impediment analyses earn their marks for an evidence-based log, correct sorting by who can act, a fair test of the competing explanation and assigned remedies. Each entry should carry a count, a time cost and evidence. Instructors reward sorting by who can remove an impediment, since that decides the remedy. Testing a stated claim against the totals, and conceding where it is partly right, shows balance. Noting impediments that mix internal and external causes shows nuance. Remedies should name the person who can act. Labeling estimates honestly and citing sources on flow or organizational impediments complete the rubric. A breakdown by Sprint that links lost days to missed goals strengthens the test considerably.
MT247 Unit 8 help: mistakes that cost points
Students often list frustrations without counts or time lost, which leaves nothing to test. Another common error is treating every impediment as the team's fault, or every one as management's. Some analyses assign all external problems to the Scrum Master to fix personally. Others propose remedies with no owner. Check that the lost days add up and that the percentage uses total available capacity, not the days actually worked. Keep the tone factual, since the analysis may reach the people whose decisions it names. Send what your team has logged or remembers about lost time, and a writer can build the log, sort it and assign each remedy to the person able to act.
Get an MT247 Unit 8 example written to your instructions
Send the case with any logs or Sprint records it supplies, plus the Unit 8 prompt and rubric. Within 24-48h a free first analysis measures each impediment, sorts it by who holds the power to remove it and routes it to that person, so the discipline share and the authority share both show. The paper above is an original model document written by our desk, not a submitted student paper and not an official Purdue University Global document.
More MT247 papers and BS in Business Administration samples
- MT247 Unit 1: Discussion Board Post
- MT247 Unit 2: Framework Explanation
- MT247 Unit 3: Role Analysis
- MT247 Unit 4: Backlog Ordering Exercise
- MT247 Unit 5: Estimation Exercise
- MT247 Unit 6: Seminar Reflection
- MT247 Unit 7: Sprint Planning Artifact
- MT247 Unit 9: Retrospective Design
- MT247 Unit 10: Adoption Assessment
- MT246 Unit 8: Resource Assignment Plan
- MT245 Unit 8: Feasibility Assessment
- MT243 Unit 8: Valuation and Pricing Memo
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MT247 Unit 8 questions, answered
How precise do the lost-day figures need to be?
Reasonable and sourced, not exact. Strong analyses take figures from Sprint records, blocked-item logs or the team's own notes and label them as estimates. The example counts developer-days from three Sprints of records, rounded to half days. What matters is that the comparison between categories holds up, and twelve days against twenty and a half would survive modest errors either way.
What if an impediment is partly the team's and partly management's?
Split it, or classify it by the larger lever, and say which. Mid-Sprint additions, for example, come from the vice president, but a team could also decline them by pointing to the Sprint Goal. The example classifies that item as authority, because the team tried declining and was overruled, and notes the partial team lever in a sentence.
Does the Scrum Master remove impediments personally?
The 2020 Guide says the Scrum Master causes the removal of impediments to the team's progress, which often means bringing them to whoever can act. A Scrum Master cannot personally overrule a vice president or a legal department. The example routes each authority impediment through the Scrum Master to a named decision-maker, with its cost in developer-days attached as the argument.
Where can I find a free MT247 Unit 8 sample paper?
The full MT247 Unit 8 impediment analysis is printed here. It tests a manager's discipline claim against three Sprints of logged impediments and finds most lost time traced to decisions outside the team.
Does the Scrum Master remove impediments personally in the MT247 Unit 8 sample?
Not for the outside ones. The Scrum Master takes the evidence to the people who can act, the vice president, security, IT operations and legal, and the team fixes its own four habits.