WIP limits draw a hard line in the sand, keeping you and your teams focused on delivering outstanding tasks, rather than starting new ones. They encourage team members to come together and resolve process bottlenecks to enable a smooth flow of work.
WIP limits are game-changing because they simultaneously enable you to:
- Relieve overburden
- Avoid delays
- Eliminate multitasking
- Prevent context-switching
Most importantly of all, they reduce your delivery times because the focus of the team moves from starting new things to getting things done.
I’m going to share some (very) simplified math to help illustrate the power of WIP limits even further. It’s known as Little’s Law, and it can be represented in the following way:
Cycle Time = WIP/Throughput
According to Little’s Law, in order to decrease times you need to either 1) increase throughput or 2), decrease the work in progress.
You can try to increase your throughput, but that’s usually way more challenging than putting a limit on the number of work items in progress.
While this at first may sound like you’re getting less done, the reality is the exact opposite. Because you are narrowing your focus on just a few important items at a time, you are finishing the work sooner, which in turn means that you’re delivering value to your customers faster.
How to Strategically Implement WIP Limits in Your Process
See, the common misconception is that WIP limits represent a number and that’s not always the case. There are so many ways to limit your work in progress and today, I’ll reveal the three steps you can follow that’ll help you make the most of your improvement efforts.
1. Start with a Simple Policy
In the beginning, you don’t even need to bring up WIP limits. The main goal behind this practice is to focus on getting work done. So, how can we achieve the same results without putting a number on your columns?
Bring your team together and brainstorm ideas on how to achieve your desired outcome. Create an explicit process policy and gain an agreement to respect and continuously improve that policy.
It might look something like this:
“Once a piece of work is finished, instead of immediately pulling a new item from the backlog, first, go through the cards on the board. Start from the far most right side column (the one before Done), then go towards the beginning of the workflow.
Look for items that are not assigned to anyone, any issues that need to be fixed (even if they are not assigned to you), anything that’s waiting for code review or implement feedback from code review.
A new item of work should only be started if there is literally nothing that you can do to help the ongoing work items move forward in the process.“
A policy like this helps you guide your team toward the exact same outcome as you’d have by restricting the number of items on the board. What it does differently is to create some space for experimentation.
As you begin using this policy, observe the outcome. Are your teams doing a good job of handling each other’s tasks? Do they feel confident using this new approach to managing the work? Do they feel empowered to identify opportunities for improvement and speak up? Awesome – it may be time to put actual WIP limits in place!
Are they still having trouble adjusting? Do they feel stuck due to obstacles outside of their control?
Then it’s time to investigate and see what the obstacles are.
Are there team members who are too specialized to work on each other items? Maybe the priorities aren’t clear, or there are way too many dependencies outside of your control. Tackle them first before you move forward with the implementation of WIP limits.
2. Move to a Per Column WIP Limit
If your team is comfortable implementing the initial simple policy and the outcomes have been positive, you’re ready to begin using actual WIP limits.
First of all, make peace with the fact that any WIP limit you impose at the beginning will be adjusted afterwards.
What’s important here is that your team is the one that decides what the limits on the work should be – because they know their own capacity best. (Also, if the team members set their own WIP limits, there won’t be a reason to break them).
Whatever number of items your team choose as the limit for each column, it should ensure that no one has to multitask and that everyone has something to do.
Replies to This Discussion