Work in Process (WIP)

Notes

• Work in process is how many things a team works on simultaneously.

• Some calls it "work in progress" instead of "work in Process" since the term "process" has a negative connotation in many organizations. The problem in many companies is that they have a lot of work in process that doesn't make any progress. Therefore, "Work in Process" better describes the reality within many organizations.

• A high number of working in the process leads to a high queue capacity utilization, which causes problems such as a higher cycle time and slows down the team's response to changes—the opposite of agile.

• Less WIP means shorter cycle times and a better flow efficiency.

• Too much work in the system diminishes predictability, and adherence to delivery schedules isn't present.

Backlinks

• The Principles of Product Development Flow
• Control WIP by Shedding Requirements
• Demand-Focused Approaches to Control WIP
• Effects of Set a Limit on WIP (Work in Process)
• Enhance the Effectiveness of WIP Constraints by Cross-Training Workers
• Fixed WIP Couples the Batch Sizes of Adjacent Processes
• Flow Efficiency
• High-States/Congested Queues
• Kanban Pull Principle
• Kanban Uses WIP Constraints to Control the Cycle Time
• Kanban
• Queues in Product Development
• The Economics of Holding WIP Changes when Queue Size Changes
• The Kanban System Doesn't Make Assumptions About the Location of Bottlenecks
• The Local Constraints of the Kanban System Have an Impressive Feedback Speed
• Theory of Constraints (TOC)
• Zombie Projects