WIP & Lead Time

What is Work In Progress? Is it the same as Work In Process?

A Visual Representation of the 'WIP - Lead time' relationship

Below is an animation explaining the above chart.

Animation Click to Expand

Length: 1 min 32 sec

Restarts every 1 min 40 sec

A walkthrough of the chart above.

Comparing the two charts

Let's Compare Work In Process (WIP1) and Work In Progress (WIP2)

Work in Process - WIP1

Work in Progress - WIP2

The only difference between these two charts is the replacement of the word Lead for Cycle.

But note that WIP means something subtly different in each of the two charts:

(Work in Process versus Work in Progress)

Typically in the world of agile software development and lean software practices, WIP means Work In Progress. This is because - when considering people and teams rather than machines - minimising WIP when defined as WIP2 is normally of more benefit than reducing the amount of work items not even started.

This is for a number of reasons, but the main two are:

To create value as soon as possible by focussing more of the team on fewer work items.
(Reduce Cycle Time)
To reduce the amount of context/task switching, which is hugely inefficient for knowledge-workers that are solving complex problems and need to spend time deep in thought.
(Reduce Waste)

However, minimising Work in Process is still important in agile software development. Good house keeping, which in this case is good Product Backlog Management, should look to reduce the number of items on the backlog as well as effectively sequencing those that are on it.