How do we actively manage items in the workflow/items in progress in Kanban?

The second practice in the Kanban Guide is actively managing items in a workflow. These items are work items.

What are work items in progress?

Work items in progress are the ones between the “started” point and the “finished” point.

Strike a balance

You can have more than one “started” point and more than one “finished point”.

But… let’s keep things simple and imagine we have a definition of workflow with:

• 1x “started” point; and
• 1x “finished” point.

Now, imagine there are two active columns between the “started” point and the “finished” point. There are work items in both of those columns.

Those two columns represent steps in the work and how the work gets done.

Kanban system members need to be cognizant of how we strike…