Limit of work in progress (WIPL) - Lean - Kanban -

Feature Requests
#1

Hi,

I am looking from a Lean - Kanban - Agile point of view.

I 'd like to limit the workload (i.e. number of items in a certain state) Work in Progress Limit (WIPL)

Example: no more than X number of items can be in the state of “testing”.
where X is our WIPL

In Infinity, I understand, the Item States is handled by labels.
It would be great to be able to fix the max number of items that can have a certain label value.

To display on the top of the column this limit in the column view.
If we cannot stop the drag and drop, maybe adding some colouring effect for the items exceeding the WIPL would do.

Side effect: this could also mean that you cannot have more than Y number of Items with priority “high”,
which, in principle, is not a bad thing.
Thanks
u.

#2

Hi @ugonuv

I do understand and I do like what you are saying, you will basically be able to set a specific amount of “data/tasks” under each status / stage, by limiting it to 5-6 items or similar.

That would bring even more customizability to Infinity, however - I am not sure about the 'total" usage of it, and that’s why I would strongly encourage you to suggest this via our form - so that other users can vote for it as well. It will help us understand how important, necessary and needed such feature is!

Thank you for suggesting it! :+1:

#3

Hi guys,

I am sure are all proficient in Agile & kanban, but if I understand what @marko meant, I should spend 2 words on why one should never ever use a kamban without WIPL (work in progress limited).

The simplest Agile - Kamban config is: ToDo, Doing, Done
The simplest Agile mantra is “Stop Starting, Start Finishing”

Meaning: you do not start (put in the “Doing” column) a new task until you have some spare working capacity. “Doing” is not wait and see…

EXAMPLE
Let’s suppose we have a team of 2.

If we do not limit the work in progress, they might end up in this situation.
And now let us ask: on which task should they be working right now?

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60 years of kanban has proven that delivery greatly increases when you assign a WIPL to each column (except for the backlog obviously!).

So, let’s suppose we have seen that our team of 2 is able to work best on max 3 tasks simultaneously for each component.
In kanban (not scrum, where we wait for the end of the sprint) when a task has been completed, a new one is being pulled.
The config is:

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now, most of us use many columns, and naturally, each one might have it different WIPL

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PRIORITIES
I suggest also to people and teams to limit priorities.
You cannot have everything Top Priority. it does not make sense!
If everything is red urgent, you just give up and go home.

So I invite you to put a WIPL also on the priority label!

Guys, though very basic, I hope it helps.
Or I have completely missed @marko point? :joy::joy::joy:

ciao,
u.

2 Likes
#4

Hi @ugonuv :wave:

It’s alright, thank you for the additional details on this whole topic, much appreciated!

For now, inside infinity, you are the one who decides how many tasks you are going to have in any column and in whatever priority (as you set priorities yourself) that is, as you have a complete control over your data, structure and workflow.

Regardless of how small or how big your team is, you can always assign diffrerent tasks to your collaborators, who can work on them - themselves, see them in a specific view, see how many things they have to work on for that day, that week, that month, see in what kind of priority those tasks are and then adapt their own work accordingly, whether that’s by changing its priority, deciding what to work on, or changing their status/priority to something else. Yes, they cannot limit to have only 3 items in “doing” column specifically, but ultimately they decide how many they are going to put in there for that specific day, week, month, year, whatever the case might be.

Regardless it is good to get all the info, gather additional ideas and see in what other ways Infinity can be improved, what features we could add to it or what else can be done with it!

Once again, thank you for the suggestions!

1 Like
#5

This sounds like the kind of thing a chrome extension might be good for, now they have an api out.

2 Likes
#6

https://startinfinity.com/project-management-methodologies/kanban#Swimlanes :wink:

2 Likes
#7

+1. Having limits is listed as a good idea by Infinity, on the website. It should be a functionality on the tool Infinity sells.

1 Like