What is a blocker?
A blocker is anything that stops a piece of work from moving forward that the person doing it cannot resolve alone, such as a missing decision, an access request or a dependency on another team.
Examples of blockers
- Waiting for a decision from someone who has not replied.
- No access to a system, account or credential.
- Another team’s work has to land first.
- A bug in a shared service owned by someone else.
Blocker vs impediment
The words overlap. In Scrum, an impediment is anything slowing the team down, and removing impediments is part of the Scrum Master’s job. A blocker is the sharpest kind: the work has stopped, not just slowed. Calling everything a blocker dilutes the word, so keep it for work that genuinely cannot continue.
Raising blockers in a standup
The blocker question is the most valuable part of any standup update, written or live. Name the blocker, who can unblock it and since when: “Waiting on legal sign-off for the contract, asked Sam on Tuesday.” An update that just says “some blockers” gives nobody anything to act on.
How to resolve blockers
Give every blocker an owner who will chase it, even if they cannot fix it themselves. Review open blockers daily, escalate anything older than two days, and track how long blockers stay open: a team blocked for a week by the same dependency every month has a structural problem, not a bad sprint.
Last reviewed 2026-11-01.