Everything Started, Nothing Finished
3 minute read
What you are seeing
Open the team’s board on any given day. Count the items in progress. Count the team members. If the first number is significantly higher than the second, the team has a WIP problem. Every developer is working on a different story. Eight items in progress, zero done. Nothing gets the focused attention needed to finish.
At the end of the sprint, there is a scramble to close anything. Stories that were “almost done” for days finally get pushed through. Cycle time is long and unpredictable. The team is busy all the time but finishes very little.
Common causes
Push-Based Work Assignment
When managers assign work to individuals rather than letting the team pull from a prioritized backlog, each person ends up with their own queue of assigned items. WIP grows because work is distributed across individuals rather than flowing through the team. Nobody swarms on blocked items because everyone is busy with “their” assigned work.
Read more: Push-Based Work Assignment
Horizontal Slicing
When work is split by technical layer (“build the database schema,” “build the API,” “build the UI”), each layer must be completed before anything is deployable. Multiple developers work on different layers of the same feature simultaneously, all “in progress,” none independently done. WIP is high because the decomposition prevents any single item from reaching completion quickly.
Read more: Horizontal Slicing
Unbounded WIP
When the team has no explicit constraint on how many items can be in progress simultaneously, there is nothing to prevent WIP from growing. Developers start new work whenever they are blocked, waiting for review, or between tasks. Without a limit, the natural tendency is to stay busy by starting things rather than finishing them.
Read more: Unbounded WIP
How to narrow it down
- Does each developer have their own assigned backlog of work? If yes, the assignment model prevents swarming and drives individual queues. Start with Push-Based Work Assignment.
- Are work items split by technical layer rather than by user-visible behavior? If yes, items cannot be completed independently. Start with Horizontal Slicing.
- Is there any explicit limit on how many items can be in progress at once? If no, the team has no mechanism to stop starting and start finishing. Start with Unbounded WIP.
Related Content
- Work Items Take Days or Weeks to Complete - High WIP directly increases cycle time
- Pull Requests Sit for Days Waiting for Review - Review queues are a common source of excess WIP
- Unbounded WIP - No limits on work in progress
- Limiting WIP - Setting and enforcing WIP limits
- Work in Progress - Measuring and tracking WIP over time