Cap how much work is in progress at once and park the excess, so the organization finishes before it starts.
Little gets finished because too much is started. Capping work-in-progress forces completion before new starts, which raises throughput even though it feels counterintuitive.
Size the limit to the capacity baseline from the Load Map. The governing rule: "stop starting, start finishing." When you are at your limit, no new work begins until something is completed and cleared.
| Person / team | True capacity | Max concurrent significant efforts (the WIP limit) |
|---|---|---|
Move everything above the limit out of "in progress" into a defined backlog. Parked is not dropped; it is explicitly not-now, waiting for capacity to free. The discomfort of parking work is the discipline doing its job.
| Item moved to backlog | Why parked (over limit / lower priority) | Condition to pull it back in |
|---|---|---|
Your answers stay in your browser on this page and are never sent anywhere. At each review, confirm the limits are holding and re-tune if the baseline has changed.