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Allen Holub's avatar

It's certainly Lean thinking. (WIP limits, ready queues, etc., were in use at Toyota long before Kanban was a gleam in Anderson's eye.) A good book on Lean (or Kanban) will help you find arguments. I like the Poppendiecks' "Implementing Lean Software Development" [https://amzn.to/4wFEGlY], and Goldratt's "The Goal" [https://amzn.to/4flBLrR].

Tristan Hood's avatar

Love this. I’m more of Kanban person, so WIP Limits resonate. I’ve seen them help teams blow the lid off their ability to focus and deliver value. The Backlog Limit was a hard one to get teams to consider. People love hoarding things to do almost as much as they love “multitasking”. I’m a “Nuke and Pave” guy. If it’s important, it comes back around.

In fact, I’ve proven this so many times it’s crazy. I’ll go in and nuke anything over 30 days old and see who notices. I think in the history of doing this, I can’t recall a single one. Not a single one. No one seems to really remember that stuff if you drop it.

Luís Soares's avatar

awesome! I wrote one with the same name before and quoted you :)

https://medium.com/codex/nobacklog-f70a25e9bc95

Eric Rizzo's avatar

This sounds a lot like Kanban with strict WIP and To Do limits. Would that be a fair assessment? If not, what specifically would be different? I ask not out of criticism, but rather because I welcome trying this approach but must anticipate and have ready answers for the skeptics in my organization.