Limiting Macro and Micro WIP

The concept of Limiting WIP (Work in Progress) to improve flow and productivity is increasingly well known, but can be difficult to achieve in practice.

I’m here to tell you that it’s even worse than you think!

Even if you can slice and prioritise effectively, *and* limit the WIP of your ongoing tasks, you still need to attend to how many distinct projects you have on the go at once — or pay a heavy price.

Definitions

I have learned the hard way to distinguish between what I call Macro WIP and Micro WIP:

• Macro WIP refers to the number of projects (or other big contexts) in which you are involved
• Micro WIP refers to the number of tasks you have on the go

“Slicing” elephants into mice is necessary, but not enough!

Micro WIP — the “easy” bit

You can fix Micro WIP by slicing everything fine (a learnable skill), prioritising intelligently, and keeping down the number of tasks you have open to a very low number.

Then if you need to change priorities on the fly you can usually finish the current task before moving onto the urgent thing, and shuffle the remaining priorities. Of course for a true emergency — i.e. it’s on fire!!!— you can and should drop everything.

Ideally, when you finish one task and switch to another, the new task will be in a related context, e.g. within the same project. However …

Macro WIP — the harder bit

… this is not always the case. If you have multiple projects in flight sometimes you are going to do a “cross-project switch”.

For example, when you finish one task in Project A and commence a task in Project B you will be doing a major context switch. So from a micro perspective all is fine, but you are incurring a huge amount of context change, and that is going to cost you. And if you do it a lot of these switches, it will also exhaust you.

I think of this as Macro WIP, and limiting it means that you need to say “No” not only to your stakeholders, but potentially to yourself. If you tend to suffer from FOMO when you hear about exciting projects, this bit is going to be particularly painful.

A second factor that contributes to Macro WIP is the context change of zooming in and out between different levels of detail, and taking up different “lenses”:

• Working in the details of a project (doin’ the tasks!), vs
• Liaising with stakeholders, interviewing customers, exploring funding options, etc. even for the same project

This kind of Macro WIP is very much the province of managers and other senior folk. At the level of Business Owner it connects to the topic of “Are you working On your Business or In your Business?”

Key point: Even if you are a “super slicer” and “on-point prioritiser” you can’t outrun the costs of Macro WIP if you are across too many projects / contexts.

Jerry Weinberg’s visualisation works perfectly for Macro WIP:

Jerry Weinberg’s model of the cost of Context switching

Micro WIP tips

• Slice projects into small tasks
• Limit your micro WIP
• Finish your current task before re-prioritising (except for true emergencies)
• Use Kanban or similar to visualise flow

Macro WIP tips

• Limit how many projects you are involved in
• If you must work across multiple projects (e.g. when in a governance role) cluster big blocks of time (e.g. half days and full days) to reduce the raw number of macro-context switches
• Consider the additional overhead of mixing manager and maker roles: managers may have to be across a number of projects, so don’t expect them to have more than one project (if that) in which they are doing deep work
• To address Macro WIP at an organisation structural level look into Team Topologies, where “team cognitive load” is used as an additional lens

Conclusion

Effective workflow management goes beyond limiting micro Work in Progress (WIP). While fine task slicing and micro WIP management are crucial, addressing macro WIP — your involvement in distinct projects — is equally vital.

Successfully managing micro WIP involves fine slicing, intelligent prioritisation, and using tools like Kanban. Dealing with macro WIP demands saying “No” to additional projects, resisting the allure of exciting opportunities.

To navigate macro WIP effectively, limit the number of projects, cluster time for focus, and recognise challenges in combining managerial and creative roles. Exploring organisational solutions like Team Topologies offers a structural framework for broader macro WIP management.