A client’s team spent a full week adding a CSV export to their admin panel. Two engineers, clear requirements, maybe a day of actual work. The rest of the time went to understanding existing code well enough to change it safely. That’s what I call codebase drag: when the codebase makes every task take longer than it should. It doesn’t show up in any dashboard or sprint report.
We used to do retrospectives at one of my old jobs, because everywhere loves cargo-culting agile and scrum stuff.
I quickly realized that a lot of the problems were largely outside the team’s control. It was shit like “The CEO doesn’t believe in designers or UX, so he won’t hire one, so we spend a lot of time doing that work badly ourselves.” Or, “management is making us spend all this time in ‘planning meetings’ so we don’t get anything done”
Stuff that has easy solutions, but we can’t do because some idiot or powerful cry-baby is in the way.
Retrospectives are great for finding and sharing a consensus on these kinds of issues. The team can weigh their options. Known limitations are much better than unknown ones. And often, some bandaids and workarounds are possible to diminish negative effects, at least to a degree.
I’ve definitely had things we had to wait for, or are still waiting for. At least we don’t usually get outright rejections.