Kanban: Stop Starting, Start Finishing

Most Engineering teams treat their board like a "Menu." "We have 50 tickets in 'In Progress'. Look how busy we are!"

Being busy is not the same as being productive. If you have 50 cars on a highway, traffic moves fast. If you have 5,000 cars on a highway, traffic stops.

Kanban is a system for optimizing Flow. It doesn't care about your deadlines. It cares about your constraints.

Here is what we'll cover:

1. Visualizing Work: Seeing the invisible pile-up.
2. WIP Limits: The controversial tool that actually works.
3. Pull vs Push: Stop shoving tickets onto developers.

1. Visualizing the "Hidden Factory"

Software work is invisible. You can't see the pile of inventory sitting on a developer's desk. The Kanban Board makes the invisible visible.

The Golden Rule: Every single thing you do must be on the board.

• "Quick bug fix"? On the board.
• "Helping Sales with a query"? On the board.
• "Updating CI config"? On the board.

If it's not on the board, you are lying to yourself about your capacity.

2. WIP Limits (Work In Progress)

This is the hardest pill to swallow. You must set a Hard Limit on how many tickets can be in a column.

Example:

• In Review Column: Max 3 tickets.

Scenario:

1. You finish coding a feature.
2. You try to move it to "In Review."
3. The column is full (3/3).
4. STOP. You are not allowed to pick up a new ticket.

What do you do? You don't code. You go help clear the "In Review" column. You review someone else's code. You unblock the bottleneck.

Mentor Tip: WIP Limits force teamwork. Without them, everyone stays in their silo, piling up inventory that never ships.

3. Pull System vs. Push System

• Push System (Bad): Manager assigns tasks. "Here, do this. And this. And this." Result: Overload and Burnout.
• Pull System (Good): Developer finishes a task. Then they look at the queue and "Pull" the next one.

You can only Pull if there is capacity (WIP Limit). This ensures that the team never takes on more work than it can handle.

4. Measuring Flow: Cycle Time

Forget "Story Points." They are made up numbers. Measure Cycle Time: "How many days does it take from 'In Progress' to 'Deployed'?"

If your Cycle Time is 10 days, you are slow. If you lower your WIP Limits, your Cycle Time will drop to 3 days. Math/Little's Law: Cycle Time = WIP / Throughput

Summary

1. Visualize Everything. hiding work hides problems.
2. Limit WIP. Stop Starting, Start Finishing.
3. Optimize Flow. A ticket in "Review" is inventory. It has negative value until it is shipped.