Limiting work in progress

Limiting work in progress is an essential concept in lean manufacturing, which has had a great impact on Agile methods. However, it’s not limited to adaptive projects, and every project can benefit from it.

We don’t have to avoid all forms of parallel work, but there’s an optimal level of parallelism for each type of work that is usually much lower than what most people expect. When you spread your capacity into too many deliverables at the same time, it becomes too distracting, and everyone would be tempted to start working on a new deliverable as soon as one runs into difficulties. Solving issues and finishing something immediately is usually easier than leaving it for the future. Remember: It’s best to focus on finishing everything sooner rather than starting it sooner.

It’s helpful to have an element in your methodology that encourages everyone to finish and close deliverables before moving on to new ones. On the other hand, the same element can be connected to an informal (or formal, if needed) acceptance by the project manager and then by the customer, which in turn helps with the previous point about avoiding issues at the end of the project.