Implementing Kanban WIP Limits in Greenhopper

Deepak Indoliya

As per the booked called KANBAN - Successful Evolutionary Change for your Technology Business by David Anderson, the WIP limit shoould be set in such a way that you consider the In Progress and Done columns together towards the WIP limit. However, the Rapid Board does not allow this functionality. It only allows setting the limits on one column at a time.

Question - Is there a way to enforce (or even visually indicate) WIP violations when the WIP is to be managed as two columns together?

Peter Shiner

As I understand your question.... How do I add the "In Progress" and "Complete" states together for any Kanban/Mfg cell in my workflow.... e.g. If the Wip limit is 3, that includes in process as well as complete items not yet taken by a following process. ( or alternatively the inbound "Ready for" queue and "In Process" items )

My answer would be "Not in the same Rapid Board Configuration". So you could have multiple configurations and swiitch between them.

In the Rapid Board I would put both states into a single column so the limit is applying to the total work in progress and done. You've got your hard combined limit setup. Now using two swimlanes, one for the queue and the other for in process, you can eye the number of items in process (filter using assignee = empty, or user to determine the issue's swimlane). This works well if you have few in process items and there is a 1:1 relationship of "Technical Task" to "Assignee". A workflow post function to clear assignee when Done (or placed in the "Ready For" queue and it should be fairly clean. I realize this is not exactly what you were asking but would it work for you?

You could also have another Rapid View Configuration focused on assigned tasks looking at only the "In Process" statuses to check the corresponding swim lane above. Sort of a check totals, and then check in process two-step.