When to mark a work item blocked versus creating an impediment work item in TFS2013

Question

Our team is going to start tracking our roadblocks (or impediments) better but I see that there are Impediment work items and there is the Blocked dropdown in a task. When would I simply set a task as blocked vs creating a new Impediment work item?

Answer 1

My take on this is, Microsoft expect you to use an impediment for an item of work you would that is purely about unblocking a problem:

From MSDN:

By defining and managing impediment work items, your team can identify and track problems that prevent it from completing tasks efficiently. Teams typically identify impediments during daily scrums. The scrum master is responsible for helping resolve these impediments and improve team productivity.

For example:

• "Alice needs a Copy of VS 2015 RC for the next spike, but IT won't let her install it", would be tracked via an impediment.
• "Bob needs to get this Task code reviewed by Carol, but she's on leave today" would be done by blocking the task.

This is my take on what MS plan these to be used on. My experience, just pick what works for your team, adjusting in the retrospective where necessary. You could try using one or the other. So long as the work is done, blockers are unblocked and the team is happy, it doesn't really matter.