From the course: Agile Software Development
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How to set WIP limits
From the course: Agile Software Development
How to set WIP limits
- So how do you come up with the numbers for WIP limits? There are numerous ways to set a WIP limit. Many books even mention complex formulas to calculate WIP. But let's look at a couple of simple guidelines. Kanban team sometimes set WIP limits at team level. This means that team as a unit cannot have more work items than the WIP limit. In such cases, a general guideline is to set the team WIP to the number of team members plus a buffer. This buffer adds a few extra tasks that allows team members to fall back to if other tasks become blocked. So a team of 6 people could set their team WIP limit to their team size, plus a 50% buffer. So the team WIP limit for this team would be 9, 50% of 6 is 3, plus the team size of 6 gets the WIP limit of 9. WIP limits can be set at each step of the process. A general guideline here is to find the slowest step, the step that takes the maximum amount of time per person, set the WIP limit of that step to the number of persons working on that step…
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