Managing Work in Progress as a Product Manager: How to Boost Efficiency by Increasing Focus

Product managers often deal with a barrage of requests, ideas, and tasks, which can lead to high work in progress (WIP) when multiple projects are tackled simultaneously. While prioritization is crucial, teams may still end up juggling too many initiatives at once, which isn't ideal. This article delves into why high WIP can be detrimental, when it might be necessary, and strategies for reducing it.

Why High WIP is Problematic

Impact on Team Morale Even if high WIP doesn’t affect overall delivery speed, it can still harm team morale. Take the example of a six-member team working on six different projects, each requiring six months to complete. In a low-WIP scenario, the team would finish one project every month. But with high WIP, each project drags on for six months before completion. Even though the team ships a project monthly in both cases, the prolonged delivery time of each project in a high-WIP environment can make the work feel never-ending and demoralizing. Delivering quickly boosts morale, while delayed completion can leave the team feeling drained.

Context Switching High WIP comes with the real cost of context switching. When a team juggles multiple tasks, they lose time and efficiency shifting focus from one project to another. This delay makes each project take longer than it should.

Decreased Collaboration and Quality When multiple projects run simultaneously, team members might end up working in silos. This can lead to weaker collaboration, as they struggle to find the right support or spend time catching others up, adding to context-switching costs. Collaboration improves morale and quality, but in a high-WIP environment, both suffer.

Environmental Changes Longer project timelines increase the risk of environmental changes, which can affect priorities, scope, or specifications. For example, a project started as a sales necessity might lose relevance by the time it's finished. Longer development cycles can also expose the project to changes that further delay its completion.

Delayed Learning Slow project completion means delayed feedback and learning. A team might realize after finishing the first project that subsequent ones are no longer necessary or need to be adjusted. When too many projects are worked on simultaneously, it’s harder to learn from earlier initiatives and make necessary changes.

When High WIP is Justifiable

While generally discouraged, high WIP isn’t always bad. There are scenarios where it can be beneficial:

Balancing Fast and Slow Projects Sometimes, large projects cannot be broken down into smaller, shippable units. In such cases, it can help to take short breaks to complete smaller tasks and achieve quick wins, boosting team morale. However, this should be done sparingly and with clear time boundaries.

Combining Discovery and Delivery In product teams responsible for both discovery (figuring out what to build) and delivery (building it), a certain level of parallel work is unavoidable. While one project is being delivered, the team might already be exploring what comes next. Balancing both efficiently ensures shared context on upcoming projects and minimizes overlap.

Staying Responsive Teams often have to respond to urgent requests, bugs, or production incidents. While these interruptions can increase WIP, a balance must be struck between handling reactive tasks and making progress on key priorities. Ideally, reactive work should be limited to about 10-20% of the workload.

Strategies to Reduce WIP

Develop a Clear Product Strategy Reducing WIP requires strong prioritization, which is only possible with a clear product strategy. Instead of just relying on prioritization frameworks, having a well-defined vision and goals is essential. If organizational leadership hasn’t provided this, product managers can develop a strategy for their own area and align it with leadership.

Focus Relentlessly With a clear strategy, the next step is to focus intensely on it. High WIP often stems from trying to tackle too many objectives at once. Ideally, teams should work on one primary goal at a time, and multiple teams should pursue the same overarching goal to avoid distractions.

Say “No” to Good Ideas To maintain focus, you’ll have to say "no" or "not now" to many good ideas. This is essential in prioritizing the best ideas and preventing scope creep.

Plan Capacity Proactively WIP can build up when there’s an imbalance in team roles. For instance, backend engineers might complete their tasks while frontend engineers are still busy, leading the backend team to start new projects. Addressing this involves better balancing workloads, cross-training team members, and identifying bottlenecks early.

Embrace Slack Time Instead of overloading the team, it’s important to allow some slack time. Teams can use this time for fixing bugs, addressing technical debt, or improving usability, rather than immediately starting a new project.

Delay Even Critical Projects Sometimes, deferring even urgent projects can lead to quicker overall progress. If an important request comes in while a team is finishing another project, it’s often better to complete the current work first. Handling projects sequentially prevents the delays caused by context switching.

Stop or Pause Work If reducing WIP isn’t possible, consider pausing or halting some projects. It’s difficult to stop projects after investing significant effort, but re-evaluating the remaining work can help focus on the highest-priority tasks.