Removing impediments and managing issues means identifying what is blocking or slowing progress, evaluating impact, prioritizing the problem, and applying an intervention strategy. The project manager also needs to recognize when a risk has become an issue and collaborate with stakeholders to resolve it.
Impediments, obstacles, blockers, and issues can affect team performance, stakeholder satisfaction, schedule, quality, and value delivery. The project manager helps make these problems visible and supports timely resolution.
Why This Task Matters for PMP® Preparation
PMP® exam scenarios often describe a team blocked by dependencies, unresolved problems, stakeholder delays, resource issues, or a risk that has occurred. The best response usually involves evaluating impact, prioritizing, collaborating, and removing or minimizing the impediment.
You should be ready to distinguish risks from issues and to choose actions that help the team continue delivering value. Ignoring blockers or escalating too early without analysis may be weak exam answers.
Enablers of This Task
- Evaluate the impact of impediments.
- Prioritize and highlight impediments.
- Determine and apply an intervention strategy to remove/minimize impediments.
- Reassess continually to help ensure impediments, obstacles, and blockers for the team are being addressed.
- Recognize when a risk becomes an issue.
- Collaborate with relevant stakeholders on an approach to resolve the issues.
To learn the Remove Impediments and Manage Issues task, you need:
- In the PMBOK Guide 8th Edition, read chapters 2.4, 2.5.2 (part ‘Standard’), 2.1.4, 2.7 (part ‘PMBOK’), Section 4 (Issue log), Section 5 (Agile release planning, Daily coordination meeting, Visual controls).
- Read chapters 3, 4, 5, 6, and A3 in the Agile Practice Guide.
- Watch the videos:
5. Test your knowledge to complete the study of the task.