Hey,
Consider a typical Kanban board:
Input, Analysis, Dev Ready, Development, Build Ready, Test, Release Ready
How to specify WIP limits for each column? any formula?
Thanks for help and time.
+1
A:
I'd start with a number of "slots" in each column that is equal to the number of people that would pick up work in the associated column. That will reveal bottlenecks or pain points. Address the pain point until it is gone.
Over time experiment with reducing the number of slots in each column.
John
2010-08-06 02:36:33
Lets say we have 10 developers, does this should mean the "Development" column will has 10 sub-column?sA column for each developer?And if building process is handled by one developer, does this mean that "Build Ready" WIP limit will be 1?What do you mean by "Bottlenecks or pain points"?like what?
El Gusto
2010-08-06 02:46:50
If you have 10 developers you have the option of starting with one column and 10 slots in that column. That means when you start from scratch you have enough items for all 10 of them. Once an item is finished it would move on to the next column freeing up space for a new item.
John
2010-08-06 06:03:28
+1
A:
No, no formula. There isn't one.
Much depends on the way your team works, practices you use, etc. If you pair program you will have lower limits in development column than a number of developers.
If you introduce Kanban in existing team you can try to map all the work which is currently in progress into MMFs, and then see how many features you do have in different columns. It would give you some insight what limits you really have at the moment and this is a good starting point to set Kanban limits.
Another advice you get is go with your/your team's gut feeling. Do what you feel is right. Then monitor whether your limits aren't too tight or too loose and adjust. Some people say "the board will tell you" and that's basically true. If you hit the bottleneck every single week you probably have you limits set too low. If one or two blockers aren't a problem limits are too high.
I wrote a post how we set our limits when we were crafting our Kanban board: http://blog.brodzinski.com/2009/11/kanban-story-kanban-board.html
pawelbrodzinski
2010-08-06 07:27:55