{"id":12877,"date":"2011-06-08T15:28:24","date_gmt":"2011-06-08T20:28:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.planview.com\/?p=12877"},"modified":"2020-03-02T15:33:49","modified_gmt":"2020-03-02T21:33:49","slug":"about-wip-limits-and-card-size","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.planview.com\/about-wip-limits-and-card-size\/","title":{"rendered":"About WIP Limits and Card Size"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-12878\" src=\"https:\/\/blog.planview.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/WIP-limits-and-card-size.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"450\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blog.planview.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/WIP-limits-and-card-size.jpg 800w, https:\/\/blog.planview.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/WIP-limits-and-card-size-300x169.jpg 300w, https:\/\/blog.planview.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/WIP-limits-and-card-size-768x432.jpg 768w, https:\/\/blog.planview.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/WIP-limits-and-card-size-750x422.jpg 750w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>One of the new features just released in Planview AgilePlace\u00a0<a title=\"What is Kanban?\" href=\"https:\/\/www.planview.com\/resources\/articles\/what-is-kanban\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" data-ol-has-click-handler=\"\">Kanban<\/a>\u00a0is the ability to\u00a0<strong>specify WIP Limits<\/strong> by Card \u201cSize\u201d, instead of the number of Cards in a lane. Earlier this week, after announcing this feature, I got a couple of \u201cReally?\u201d emails like this one, from\u00a0Arne Roock:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Chris,<\/p>\n<p>just saw your new features. Most of them look really great! But one feature confuses me: \u201cWIP Limits by Card Size\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In my understanding we intend to limit the number of items we\u00b4re working on \u2013 not the number of Story Points etc. So working at 10 items with the size of 1 is completely different from \u00a0working at two items of 5 or one item of 10!<\/p>\n<p>Now I\u00b4m interested: Have you ever seen teams succeed with limiting the total amount of effort instead of the number of cards?<\/p>\n<p>Cheers,<br \/>\nArne<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>And of course, he\u2019s entirely correct. \u00a0The\u00a0<strong>best way to limit work in process<\/strong>, we believe,\u00a0is to limit the total number of items you are working on at one time. In our team, we don\u2019t use the Card Size field at all, and whenever possible, we encourage our customers not to use it. The most successful\u00a0<a title=\"Kanban Systems\" href=https:\/\/www.planview.com\/resources\/articles\/kanban-system-maximize-time\/ target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" data-ol-has-click-handler=\"\">Kanban<\/a><a title=\"Kanban Systems\" href=https:\/\/www.planview.com\/resources\/articles\/kanban-system-maximize-time\/ data-ol-has-click-handler=\"\">\u00a0systems<\/a>\u00a0we\u2019ve observed don\u2019t track card size at all, once an item has made it onto the board (though some planning-level sizing may have occurred when deciding how to break down a larger item in to component parts to flow it onto the board).<\/p>\n<p>So, why make this feature available at all? Because our customers wanted it, and<strong>\u00a0because more and more of our customers are using Planview AgilePlace for things other than Capital-K Kanban<\/strong>:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>We have many pure Scrum teams using Planview AgilePlace as the visualization method \u2013 with no real need to consider themselves \u201cScrumBan\u201d or to \u201cconvert\u201d to using Kanban. Enforcing WIP by Card Size allows these teams to plan their sprint backlog based on Card Size, setting a WIP limit for some \u201csprint backlog\u201d lane either on the left side of the board or in the main Backlog in Planview AgilePlace.<\/li>\n<li>We also have many\u00a0<strong>teams outside of Software Development and IT organizations using Planview AgilePlace<\/strong>, for academic research projects, sales pipeline visualization, marketing plans, strategy canvases, and more.<\/li>\n<li>While many of our customers are using Planview AgilePlace at the Team level, we\u2019re getting more and more that are using it to visualize and plan at the portfolio level \u2013 an\u00a0<a title=\"Kanban for Project Portfolio Management\" href=\"https:\/\/www.planview.com\/resources\/guide\/project-management-office-ppm-best-practices\/project-portfolio-management-defined\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" data-ol-has-click-handler=\"\">enterprise Kanban view<\/a>. For planning at this level, some teams would like to be able to allocate capacity based on size, not just number of items.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>So, for those of you who are new to Kanban, and trying to learn how to be successful with it, we definitely recommend limiting your Work in Process by the # of items, not by the size of those items. \u00a0But for those of you who are pushing the boundaries in every direction, applying traditional Scrum (funny\u2026when did Scrum become \u201ctraditional\u201d?), or\u00a0<strong>applying Kanban outside of IT in other environments<\/strong>\u00a0where \u201cbest practices\u201d aren\u2019t really well understood yet, please feel free to use the new WIP limit by card size feature.<\/p>\n<p>And good luck.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>One of the new features just released in Planview AgilePlace\u00a0Kanban\u00a0is the ability to\u00a0specify WIP Limits by Card \u201cSize\u201d, instead of the number of Cards in a lane. Earlier this week, after announcing this feature, I got a couple of \u201cReally?\u201d emails like this one, from\u00a0Arne Roock: Chris, just saw your new features. Most of them&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":148,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_editorskit_title_hidden":false,"_editorskit_reading_time":0,"_editorskit_is_block_options_detached":false,"_editorskit_block_options_position":"{}","footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[511],"class_list":["post-12877","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-work-collaboration","tag-leankit"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v26.8 (Yoast SEO v26.8) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-premium-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>About WIP Limits and Card Size - Blog | Planview<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"One of the new features just released in LeanKit\u00a0Kanban\u00a0is the ability to\u00a0specify WIP Limits\u00a0by Card \u201cSize\u201d, instead of the number of Cards in a lane.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/blog.planview.com\/about-wip-limits-and-card-size\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"About WIP Limits and Card Size\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"One of the new features just released in LeanKit\u00a0Kanban\u00a0is the ability to\u00a0specify WIP Limits\u00a0by Card \u201cSize\u201d, instead of the number of Cards in a lane.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/blog.planview.com\/about-wip-limits-and-card-size\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Planview Blog\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"http:\/\/www.facebook.com\/pages\/Planview-Inc\/89422974772\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2011-06-08T20:28:24+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2020-03-02T21:33:49+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/blog.planview.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/WIP-limits-and-card-size.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Chris Hefley\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@Planview\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@Planview\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Chris Hefley\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"3 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/blog.planview.com\/about-wip-limits-and-card-size\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/blog.planview.com\/about-wip-limits-and-card-size\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Chris Hefley\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/blog.planview.com\/#\/schema\/person\/b8967ef7a1e8bd33c3e848089e0382e0\"},\"headline\":\"About WIP Limits and Card Size\",\"datePublished\":\"2011-06-08T20:28:24+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2020-03-02T21:33:49+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/blog.planview.com\/about-wip-limits-and-card-size\/\"},\"wordCount\":533,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/blog.planview.com\/#organization\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/blog.planview.com\/about-wip-limits-and-card-size\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/blog.planview.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/WIP-limits-and-card-size.jpg\",\"keywords\":[\"LeanKit\"],\"articleSection\":[\"Work Management for Teams\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/blog.planview.com\/about-wip-limits-and-card-size\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/blog.planview.com\/about-wip-limits-and-card-size\/\",\"name\":\"About WIP Limits and Card Size - 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