WIP limits

Having made a Kanban board the real magic can happen. In a physical system, there’s only so much capacity. For example, if your Kanban board tracks baking cakes and you only have one oven, there’s a natural limit on how much work can be in progress.

The trick is now to apply the same concept to your own work and impose a limit on the work-in-progress, the WIP limit.

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          └──────┘          
        ============>       
          ┌──────┐          
──────────┘      └──────────

This has several benefits:

• It makes it obvious when you have “too much on your plate.”
• It allows you to easier recognize when things are stuck and not moving.
• It let’s you calculate average flow rate.
• It subtly nudges you to actually finish a topic and get it done and over with – because otherwise you cannot start new things.