Jolly Rajan

Agile Coachwith contributions from Mark Grove

Getting to DONE Using WIP Limits

Contents

1. Goal

2. WIP Focus

3. Why WIP Matters

• Little’s Law

4. Impact of Keeping WIP Low

5. What Can Be Done?

6. Q&A

To discuss, learn, and discover methods to

manage the number of stories in progress

(i.e. Work in Progress) and provide possible

alternatives to employ before opening

additional stories.

Goal

3

When opening stories during a sprint, the

team focus is NOT trying to maximize people

utilization i.e. the goal is not to make

everyone 100% utilized.

So what is the focus?

…before we answer that, let’s first discuss

some theory…

WIP Focus

4

Why WIP Matters

5

Why WIP Matters – Little’s Law

6

WIP

Throughput

Cycle Time =

Cycle time – the time it takes to complete a story

WIP – the number of items currently in progress

Throughput – the number of units completed per time period

Why WIP Matters

7

Little’s Law

WIP

Throughput

Cycle Time =

100

25Cycle Time = = 4

135

25Cycle Time = = 5.4

By increasing WIP, cycle time actually

goes up. So how can we decrease the

cycle time? Either:

• Increasing throughput – but we can only do so

much!

• Decreasing the WIP

Why WIP Matters

Impact of keeping WIP low

9

SlackTask Switching

QualityFeedback

Overload Cycle Time

When opening stories during a sprint, the

team focus is NOT trying to maximize people

utilization i.e. the goal is not to make

everyone 100% utilized.

So what is the focus?

The focus is to get stories to DONE – and

through that goal we discover ways to employ

the team.

Back To WIP Focus

10

11

What can teams do to focus on getting open stories to DONE in place

of opening additional stories once the team has reached its limit?

Adopt the Proper Mindset - the goal of the sprint is not to maximize people’s

time/utilization on the team (note: this does not mean you want people sitting idly

by). The goal of a sprint is getting the stories to DONE

Remove Blocks for Story Development – Any team member can become active

participants in removing those blocks

Look for ways to further divide tasks - Be open to looking for opportunities to

further split tasks into smaller, more manageable chunks of work

Fix Buggy Code that Affects Completion of Your Own Stories - Even If that

Code Was Developed by Another Team - Don’t wait for other teams to fix buggy

code if they were the team that may have caused the defect in the first place. Be

open to not thinking of “my team’s code” vs. “their team’s code.”

What Can Be Done

12

Automation Testing - look for opportunities where developers can help testers

with test automation

Pair with Analysts - Developers and Testers bring a perspective that is extremely

valuable to the story creation process. Pairing them with analysts will result in

higher quality stories within a smaller time-frame

Refactor Code - Code refactoring is a continuous process that happens

throughout the life of the product. Frequent refactoring helps keep the code base

simple so that future development is easier and can also help clean up technical

debt

Pair Programming - Pair programming is a technical practice where developers

write code together. It’s demonstrated to substantially improve the quality and

extensibility of software

What Can Be Done

Tying it all together!

13