Limiting the WIP (work in progress) means that it restricts the maximum amount of the items on which we are working in the Kanban board in order to set the workflow. If you are working on multiple items at a time then you should limit the WIP it will allow you to complete the single items in no time, eventually it will help the team to focus on the current going tasks and work effectively.
Now, when you are limiting the WIP then they can work effectively and their work processes can be enhanced for good. These limits are actually considered beneficial for the deadlines as it will be easy to meet the deadlines for the products, production rate will be increase likewise.
Benefits
We can say that limiting WIP is a valuable asset when working with the Kanban board. Let us have a look on the benefits more closely:
- When we are talking about agile development then limiting the WIP can help to make the identification of inefficiency easier, and the team’s workflow can be managed easily.
- We can see the improvement in the end product
- Smaller set of tasks can be done more efficiently by the team.
- The bottlenecks and the blockers become more visible.
- The issues that were a hurdle or were blocking can be understood by the teams and they can resolve them accordingly.
- Flow of work is attained when the blockers are removed
- The focus on the tasks is increased and task switching is reduced
- When the customers are getting the items on time, then increased feedback will be noticed from the customers.
- If the team is working smoothly on Kanban board from left to right and they are facing less overload of work then the efficiency of work is increased
No doubt, limiting the WIP is an imperative tool in the agile development and no one can deny its importance in Kanban board. There are a lot of benefits of limiting the word in progress and the work can be more effective in this way so it is recommended that you should limit the work in progress whenever needed.
— Slimane Zouggari