Blocked Work Sits Idle Instead of Being Picked Up
When a developer is stuck, the item waits with them rather than being picked up by someone else. The team has no mechanism for redistributing blocked work.
Work Management and Flow Problems
WIP overload, cycle time, planning bottlenecks, and dependency coordination problems.
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Symptoms related to how work is planned, prioritized, and moved through the delivery process.
Completed Stories Don't Match What Was Needed
Stories are marked done but rejected at review. The developer built what the ticket described, not what the business needed.
Stakeholders See Working Software Only at Release Time
There is no cadence for incremental demos. Feedback on what was built arrives months after decisions were made.
Sprint Planning Is Dominated by Dependency Negotiation
Teams can’t start work until another team finishes something. Planning sessions map dependencies rather than commit to work.
Everything Started, Nothing Finished
The board shows many items in progress but few reaching done. The team is busy but not delivering.
Vendor Release Cycles Constrain the Team's Deployment Frequency
Upstream systems deploy quarterly or downstream consumers require advance notice. External constraints set the team’s release schedule.
Services in the Same Portfolio Have Wildly Different Maturity Levels
Some services have full pipelines and coverage. Others have no tests and are deployed manually. No consistent baseline exists.
Some Developers Are Overloaded While Others Wait for Work
Work is distributed unevenly across the team. Some developers are chronically overloaded while others finish early and wait for new assignments.
Work Stalls Waiting for the Platform or Infrastructure Team
Teams cannot provision environments, update configurations, or access infrastructure without filing a ticket and waiting for a separate platform or ops team to act.
Work Items Take Days or Weeks to Complete
Stories regularly take more than a week from start to done. Developers go days without integrating.