WIP Your Day Into Shape, Pt. 2
Kyle Kumpf
Boring Golfer | ?? I’m Writing a ?? About That | Operational Risk Oversight | Governance Risk Compliance | Process Improvement | Certified Enterprise Risk Professional | Project & Portfolio Management
In part 1, I discussed a high level overview of using Kanban and Work-in-Progress (WIP) limits to get more of the right things done each day. However, what does Kanban mean? Where does it come from? What's WIP and how does one limit it in reality?
Continue reading to find out.
Kanban (kahn-bahn)
According to the Kanban Guide for Scrum Teams, Kanban is a strategy for optimizing the flow of value through a process that uses a visual, work-in-process limited pull system.
In Japanese, Kan means visual and ban means card.
I've often described Kanban as a visual signal to do something.
Simply stated, it’s a process for pulling work into production when it is needed, not before.
WIP
Work-in-Progress is any partially completed work. In manufacturing, this is raw materials waiting for completion. In the office, this is an unfinished Power Point or loan application.
WIP Limits
Work-in-Progress limits are like the name implies; constraints as to how much work is partially completed. This concept is well understood in physical supply chain and manufacturing environments. A large volume of partially completed raw materials may need to be scrapped if the order is cancelled. That's money lost.
In the office, it's not so easily understood. However, it is just as important to productivity and the bottom-line. Take the process of underwriting loans. Having too many in-progress can delay the completion of any one (remember Little's Law) leading to a) a customer saying no because it took too long or b) realizing some would never be funded. Both lead to money spent on the effort with no resulting revenue.
Limiting the physical size of the Doing category (Work-in-Progress category), helps to limit the number of tasks you're doing. Using painter's tape on a white board to box in a 6 x 6 area physically allows only four 3 x 3 sticky notes. As one piece of work is complete and moved to Done, space is opened, allowing the next piece of work to be pulled out of To Do and into Doing.
Limiting how much we are working on or setting criteria for what can be placed in-progress helps mitigate the risk of wasting time on work.
By using a visual system to pull our work into progress, we get more done, faster.
Now that you have a better understanding of the framework, how do you order the items in the To Do category? That's up next in part 3.
Marine Officer
4 å¹´Hey Kyle, long time no see, hope all is well. I really enjoyed these quick reads. I currently work with an IT organization that introduced me to kan ban boards but haven't seen the "idea" category till you mentioned it! I really like the idea of limiting how many items are in the "doing" space and look forward to applying this method. Thanks!
Senior Manager, Lean Operations
4 年Love your idea of the physical space to “accept†tasks. I accomplish the same thing with a weekly planner that only has a defined number of lines for each week! Whatever I don’t get accomplished each week gets copied into the next, with available space (lines) being filled in with new tasks/projects/work.
Nice share, Kyle! Thinking about how I can leverage this for personal tasks/projects. Besides Trello, do you recommend any systems/tools to visualize this?
Department Chair & Associate Professor of Marketing | Leadership & Student Engagement Advocate
4 å¹´Hi Kyle, Loving the insights delivered through this series. I find myself working on many tasks at once. I like the idea of using the Kanban 6x6 area and the use of 3x3 sticky notes as a productive constraint. I love using notebooks to keep track of tasks and projects. Would a notebook solution work for the Kanban method?