Limit Work-in-Progress

I think you have heard the advice to limit your work in progress. People tend to either mechanically follow or dismiss this direction due to unclear motivations behind it. In this section, I want to explain the underlying reason for this recommendation so that you are productive when implementing such measures.

Firstly, more work in progress means fewer things done and a longer feedback loop. As you can imagine, these consequences are not attractive from both the quantity and quality standpoint of deliverables.

For example, let us look at a typical situation in a development team that works in iterations. There are only a couple of days left until the end of a sprint, and several items are still not touched. One of the engineers becomes available to pick up new work. He decides to act smart and start working on all remaining items simultaneously to finish all of them before iteration ends and avoid carry-over. At the end of the sprint, all those work items are still in progress. Sounds familiar?