Working using Kanban WIP limits. 3 Reasons why WIP is essential for success.

What are Kanban WIP limits?

Kanban WIP limits are limits on the number of tasks you place into the work-in-progress column on your Kanban board. It’s that easy!

Why should I use WIP limits?

You should NEED to use Kanban WIP limits on your boards because, otherwise what is the alternative? It’s for your boards to devolve into chaos. We as humans tend to want to work on as many tasks as possible at once. But this is counter-productive; tasks on your kanban board should all be small tasks that are achievable in a small amount of time. These should all align with your goals to push your project forward.

Because of this, if you end up in a situation where you have many tasks in your work-in-progress column, you enter bottleneck territory. You NEVER want to be in bottleneck territory. Instead, while using WIP limits, any tasks that are stuck will be obvious to you rather than hiding among the many, many tasks, causing a bottleneck on your board.

When these tasks become obvious, you can dedicate more resources (which may be employees or something else)to breaking the bottlenecks as required.

What are other reasons to use Kanban WIP limits?

Another reason to use WIP limits is actually to make your project make more progress. How I hear you ask? Well, by using WIP limits, you are enforcing Kanban’s best principles, and you will naturally create tasks that take a shorter time to complete. This means your task throughput (The time it takes for tasks to be completed) will increase greatly.

Now, you have a very high task throughput. It actually hacks your brain, helping you to get to and maintain a flow state. This leads to much higher productivity and is proven scientifically to have an exaggerated effect on people who have ADHD. I experience this. Meaning they can get even more done than someone who does not have it in the same amount of time.

So what are the actual goals of WIP limits?

In conclusion, the goals of Kanban WIP limits for agile teams are as follows: Teams can effectively find and avoid bottlenecks, helping productivity. They can also benefit from greatly increasing their task throughput, again improving their overall productivity.

Why the focus on productivity?

Well, no matter what project management framework you use. That is always going to be the goal. It’s what keeps businesses, personal projects, or whatever else you want to use it for moving along in the most efficient way possible.