The Hidden Dangers of Too Much WIP

Bart has been in ecommerce for over 20 years, and can't imagine a better job to have. He is interested in all things agile, or anything new to learn.

  Agile  

There are a lot of articles and guidance in the industry that warn project managers and teams of the pitfalls of having too much Work in Progress (WIP.) One of the common phrases with regards to getting more done is “Stop starting, start finishing,” meaning before you start something new, you need to finish something you are already working on. Indeed, delivering working product increments is the primary objective of many methodologies, and the way that teams can demonstrate and create value along the way. While it isn’t possible to have literally no work in progress, the overall goal of a project team is to finish as many things as they can, and not be in a state of continually starting. Having too much WIP makes this goal even more difficult.

One of the reasons too much WIP is generally considered a problem is its impact on efficiency and throughput. Study after study shows the cost of context switching is often much higher than people ever expect. It’s obvious that putting one thing down and picking up another can never be done in such a way that there is no time or energy lost between the two. But there is enough evidence to show that the loss is rarely even worth the gain; that is, taking 10 minutes out to move over to another task may cost three times (or more!) that much effort, factoring getting back on track and remembering where the task was…

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