A WIP (work in progress) limit is a strategy for preventing bottlenecks in software
development.
Work in
progress limits are agreed upon by the development team before a project begins and are
enforced by the team's facilitator. For example, a team may divide the tasks that must be performed
for a feature into design, code, test and deploy. When a WIP limit for a certain task has
been reached, the team stops and works together to clear the bottleneck. The goal of working
in this manner is meant to ensure that the entire team takes ownership of the project and produces
high quality code.
WIP limits are often visualized with Kanban cards. The cards, which
are often just post-it notes, represent work in progress. To visualize work flow, Kanban
cards are posted on a board in queues representing the status of the work. The queues in the
example above would be labeled "design," "code," test," and "deploy." A Kanban board
makes it easy for the team members to visualize the point at which a WIP limit has been reached
because the queue will have an unacceptable number of Kanban cards in it.
Contributor(s): Yvette Francino
This was last updated in January 2012
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