What does work-in-progress (WIP) mean?

Agile and DevOps methodologies emphasize managing WIP to maintain a smooth, continuous development process. Teams that control WIP can maintain focus, reduce task switching, and improve code quality. These, in turn, ensure faster delivery, better collaboration, and improved software stability.

WIP is important because it affects productivity, delivery speed, and software quality. Excessive WIP leads to multitasking, which increases the chances of bugs, longer development cycles, and delayed releases. Constant WIP monitoring and management help teams maintain a steady development pace, reduce context switching, and ensure higher-quality code. Also, teams can identify bottlenecks in the development process to optimize workflows.

In Agile and DevOps, limiting WIP improves collaboration and ensures that completed work is tested and deployed faster. Effective WIP management leads to more predictable delivery schedules and better overall software performance.

WIP is typically measured by counting the number of tasks, user stories, or features currently in progress within a sprint or workflow. If a software development team uses a Kanban board to track its progress in projects with columns such as "To Do," "In Progress," and "Done," they would count the number of tasks under the "In Progress" column. The result would be their WIP for the project.

In addition to a Kanban board, other ways to track WIP include:

• Cycle time analysis: Measures the time from when a task starts to when it is completed.
• Work item aging: Monitors how long a task remains unfinished in a given phase.

Teams can set WIP limits to ensure work remains manageable and to prevent bottlenecks. A low WIP helps reduce lead time, increases throughput, and ensures faster software releases.

Teams can reduce WIP in Agile by setting limits, improving workflow efficiency, and focusing on task completion before starting new work. Each of these strategies is connected through a mutual understanding of the importance of maintaining a low WIP.

• WIP limits in Kanban and Scrum help teams control the number of active tasks and prevent overload.
• Prioritization ensures that the most critical features or bug fixes are completed first to avoid unnecessary work accumulation.
• Swarming involves developers collaborating to finish high-priority tasks, which speeds up delivery and clears blockers.
• Continuous integration and deployment (CI/CD) practices help automate testing and reduce unfinished work stuck in development.

A key element of this process is regular retrospectives to help teams analyze and adjust WIP strategies for continuous improvement. Regardless of the metrics the team uses to assess their performance, it is also important to consider this data as a signal rather than a clear indication of a problem. Engineers may require support or changes to their workflow that encourage a reduction in WIP.

Enji features Alerts and proactive bots that help teams maintain focus on completing tasks within deadlines and moving them through the necessary status changes. If a task is left in a certain status, such as "In progress," for too long, Enji will send reminders to the team to take action.

Enji also helps Agile teams conduct effective retrospectives with quick and concise reports, such as through Copilot and Summarizer, to provide managers with objective data on their workflow. This helps understand roadblocks and how well a certain strategy is working or not.