Wip Quotes

Hot damn, Wip. We’ve got a stone-cold fox on our hands.” Willa flipped Ginger the bird without looking away from the full-length mirror. “This touching family sitcom moment brought to you by the letters F and U.

The moral of the tale is this: whoever allows himself to be whipped, deserves to be whipped.

until code is in production, no value is actually being generated, because it’s merely WIP stuck in the system.

He came over in long pur­pose­ful strides, sat at the edge of her bed, and in a ten­der, pos­ses­sive ges­ture wiped the lip­stick off her lips. “What is that?” he asked. “All the other girls wear it,” Ta­tiana said, quickly wip­ing her mouth, breath­less at the sight of him. “In­clud­ing Dasha.” “Well, I don’t want you to have any­thing on your lovely face,” he said, stroking her cheeks. “God knows, you don’t need it.

For some, like me, writing comes at a price. My best creations were written while I was emotionally ripped open. I've spent some scenes so mentally self-exposed that I could barely see what I was writing. And as I sit here-my heart pounding, heaviness threatening to pull my heart down to my stomach, I ask myself this question...are you ready to bleed some more? I smile and without pause, I pull up my current WIP.

Remember, it goes beyond reducing WIP. Being able to take needless work out of the system is more important than being able to put more work into the system.

Because any Dom knows that the submissive is the one in control. He might wield the crop or the candle wax or the rope, but she holds the reins. Nothing happens without her consent.

Their lips clashed like a well choreographed sparring match as each fought to control the man that was just as fiercely kissing back. (WIP - New Beginnings, The Sapphire Tower)

From the WIP .... Behind The Fan coming soon. "He was dangerous, he was nothing she needed and everything she wanted. Dark hair, tall and broad shouldered...the man was sin on earth to her.

The feeling that the work is magnificent, and the feeling that it is abominable, are both mosquitoes to be repelled, ignored, or killed, but not indulged.

An interesting side effect of pull systems is that they limit work-in-progress (WIP) to some agreed-upon quantity,

When elephants fight, it's the grass that suffers. African/Kikuyu proverb. The title of my WIP

Winding down to the end; it has been an emotional draft so far. I don't know how I will survive reliving it in addition to the editing process! #InHidingWIP

A cloud descended upon her in that very moment, and when she saw his hand travel to his eye, wipping away a tear, the cloud expanded and turned into darkness that swallowed her entirely.

Derek and the Wolf both watched Aubree through the one pair of eyes, the Human watching with pity while the Beast made a disdainful assessment of a weaker being. Once Bitten Twice Shy (WIP)

Relationships are like flash floods, they happen when you least expect it. Can be as quick as lightning, and they change all that stand before it, and after it," WIP Strands of Sollus Book 2

Listen to me, Defecates-with-Pigeons. Long before any of you came here, we dream'd of you. All the people, even Nations far to the South and the West, dreamt you before ever we saw you,— we believ'd that you came from some other World, or the Sky. You had Powers and we respected them. Yet you never dream'd of us, and when at last you saw us, wish'd only to destroy us. Then the killing started,— some of you, some of us,— but not nearly as many as we'd been expecting. You could not be the Giants of long ago, who would simply have wip'd us away, and for less. Instead, you sold us your Powers,— your Rifles,— as if encouraging us to shoot at you,— and so we did, tho' not hitting as many of you, as you were expecting. Now you begin to believe that we have come from elsewhere, possessing Powers you do not— Those of us who knew how, have fled into Refuge in your Dreams, at last. Tho' we now pursue real lives no different at their Hearts from yours, we are also your Dreams.

Summary of Scrum vs Kanban Similarities: - Both are Lean and Agile - Both use pull scheduling - Both limit WIP - Both use transperency to drive process improvement - Both focus on delivering releasable software and often - Both are based on self-organizing teams - Both require breaking the work into pieces. - In both, the release plan is continuously optimized based on empirical data (velocity/lead time)

Decide the outer boundaries of the kanban system. It is often best to limit this to the immediate span of political control. Do not force visualization, transparency, and WIP limits on any department that does not volunteer to collaborate.

In either hand the hastning Angel caught Our lingring Parents, and to th' Eastern Gate Led them direct, and down the Cliff as fast To the subjected Plaine; then disappeer'd. They looking back, all th' Eastern side beheld Of Paradise, so late thir happie seat, Wav'd over by that flaming Brand, the Gate With dreadful Faces throng'd and fierie Armes: Som natural tears they drop'd, but wip'd them soon; The World was all before them, where to choose Thir place of rest, and Providence thir guide: They hand in hand with wandring steps and slow, Through Eden took thir solitarie way.

He’d done that to her and it woke all the primitive instincts a man in this day and age was supposed to have conquered. Fuck that. The only thing he wanted to conquer was her.

Why is the Chosen One always a he?

He purred the words, as if his tongue was lazy and had all the time in the world to wrap around each and every syllable. She wondered if his tongue would be so thorough on a woman’s body.

Rather than making generalized assumptions about what WIP limits should be for each value stream, the Value Stream Network provides the data to determine and tune flow load over time. At Tasktop, we have witnessed this effect by putting too many features that crosscut our architecture on the Hub team. While all of those large and crosscutting features were deemed critical by the business at the time, doing more than one of them in parallel across the teams within that value stream resulted in a lower flow velocity over the course of a year than the flow velocity of taking on one crosscutting feature at a time.

From the WIP Behind The Fan... “Come, sit Baby.” She joins him on the bed while her hands tremble in anticipation. Issuing a soft chuckle, he takes her chin in his hand turning her face to his. Softly he kisses her. Longingly he kisses her. Deeply, thoroughly and expertly he kisses her. Only in his twenties, he was a man of the world; he had made love to several woman. She is not intimidated by his experience but in awe of it. Such a powerful emotion attached to a natural act. He kisses her and sends her world spinning; it is unimaginable what else he was capable of doing to her. It was akin in drowning in a sweet abyss finally; he lets her up for air.

In gay conversation over our wine, after supper, he told us, jokingly, that he much admir'd the idea of Sancho Panza, who, when it was proposed to give him a government, requested it might be a government of blacks, as then, if he could not agree with his people, he might sell them. One of his friends, who sat next to me, says, "Franklin, why do you continue to side with these damn'd Quakers? Had not you better sell them? The proprietor would give you a good price." "The governor," says I, "has not yet blacked them enough." He, indeed, had labored hard to blacken the Assembly in all his messages, but they wip'd off his coloring as fast as he laid it on, and plac'd it, in return, thick upon his own face; so that, finding he was likely to be negrofied himself, he, as well as Mr. Hamilton, grew tir'd of the contest, and quitted the government.

Седнах на бара и си поръчах питие. От глъчката и топлата пара, която се изпаряваше от телата край мен, нервите ми се поотпуснаха. На бара до мен седеше някакъв мъж. Разменихме си няколко думи, изпихме няколко питиета, хвърлихме си някой друг поглед, допряхме се уж случайно няколко пъти. Малко по-късно мъжът и аз щяхме да извършим дребна транзакция. Ще си помогнем един на друг, ще разменим малко слюнка и слуз. Търсех топло човешко месо, в което да угася като фас парещата болка, която чувствах в слепоочията си. Транзакцията беше успешна, получих онова, което търсех: утехата на самоунижението. И болката изчезна. На сутринта съненият ми поглед се хлъзна в някаква банкнота на нощното шкафче до леглото. Мъжът, чието лице така и не успях да запомня, беше оставил след себе си сто гулдена. Обляна в мътната светлина, която идваше от решетестия прозорец, банкнотата разтегна лицето ми в усмивка. Snip voor een wip! Съвсем бях изключила, че живея в Червения квартал.

When he broke that long kiss, he smiled at her before kissing her hard. “So, my love, I hope that your punishment will stop you from trying another payback for a while at least?” Laura laughed and sighed, dramatically. “Of course, it will. I never want to be punished like that again. Well, not until tonight anyway. You will be back tonight, won't you? I'm often very bad at night so you may have to do this all over again to me until I learn how to be good. Hmm, and during the day, I'm not always very good either so you'd better watch out for that too.” “You don't make punishing you an easy task, do you? It almost seems like you enjoy being punished.” “No, it's not that, baby. Though, your punishment was very well given. It's just that I have a very aggressive, bad gene and it makes me backslide, umm, and often frontslide too. I have learnt with you that I'm always wanting to backslide and frontslide but, as it's obviously a genetic defect, I can't really be blamed for that, now can I” (Tales from Terrigal, Book 2, WIP)

From the WIP, Behind The Fan... The two women flipped through the pictures as morbid curiosity took hold. The photos all signed by the women; ‘To Nicky with love, Nicky you make me smile, Nicky…Nicky…Nicky.’ They glanced at each other in disgust. The last photo was face down; Kim slowly turned it upright. She questioned why she even cared, what would one more picture of her grandfather’s paramour prove to her. The woman in the photo was stunning, a black and white image someone had hand colored. Her dark brown hair brushed into soft waves; glittering earrings caught the low light of the flash. It was a full body shot; the viewer was to believe she was nude behind two immense Ostridge feather fans. She looked confidently into the camera; standing proudly with her shoulders squared and back erect. Her long legs encased in silky hose attached by the satin straps of the garters. However, it was her eyes, clear crystal bright blue. They stood out in the aged photo engaging the viewer. They were mesmerizing. “Oh dear lord, it’s Grandma!

claque, aka canned laughter It’s becoming increasingly clear that there’s nothing new under the sun (a heavenly body, by the way, that some Indian ascetics stare at till they go blind). I knew that some things had a history—the Constitution, rhythm and blues, Canada—but it’s the odd little things that surprise me with their storied past. This first struck me when I was reading about anesthetics and I learned that, in the early 1840s, it became fashionable to hold parties where guests would inhale nitrous oxide out of bladders. In other words, Whip-it parties! We held the exact same kind of parties in high school. We’d buy fourteen cans of Reddi-Wip and suck on them till we had successfully obliterated a couple of million neurons and face-planted on my friend Andy’s couch. And we thought we were so cutting edge. And now, I learn about claque, which is essentially a highbrow French word for canned laughter. Canned laughter was invented long before Lucille Ball stuffed chocolates in her face or Ralph Kramden threatened his wife with extreme violence. It goes back to the 4th century B.C., when Greek playwrights hired bands of helpers to laugh at their comedies in order to influence the judges. The Romans also stacked the audience, but they were apparently more interested in applause than chuckles: Nero—emperor and wannabe musician—employed a group of five thousand knights and soldiers to accompany him on his concert tours. But the golden age of canned laughter came in 19th-century France. Almost every theater in France was forced to hire a band called a claque—from claquer, “to clap.” The influential claque leaders, called the chefs de claque, got a monthly payment from the actors. And the brilliant innovation they came up with was specialization. Each claque member had his or her own important job to perform: There were the rieurs, who laughed loudly during comedies. There were the bisseurs, who shouted for encores. There were the commissaires, who would elbow their neighbors and say, “This is the good part.” And my favorite of all, the pleureuses, women who were paid good francs to weep at the sad parts of tragedies. I love this idea. I’m not sure why the networks never thought of canned crying. You’d be watching an ER episode, and a softball player would come in with a bat splinter through his forehead, and you’d hear a little whimper in the background, turning into a wave of sobs. Julie already has trouble keeping her cheeks dry, seeing as she cried during the Joe Millionaire finale. If they added canned crying, she’d be a mess.

From WIP 'Behind The Fan' *** “Come with me.” His warm breath caresses her ear, giving her a delicious tingle. This seduction is no accident. “Baby we can be anywhere; we’ll start a new life. Dottie, all I need is you.” She opens her eyes, he turns when he feels the flutter of her lashes. She expects another plea instead; he kisses her. Soft and slow his lips pulling her down deeper into a sweet chasm. This assault on her proprieties will be slow and subdued. He has after all proven that he is a patient man. Those musicians’ finger will first trail on the column of her neck. The touch is soft but deliberate. Do the top buttons of her blouse come undone on their own accord or has he banished them? She is never sure but before she can register the affect, he lightly strokes the swell of her breast. It is sinful; despite her confessions to the priest regarding this weakness, she is never stronger. Her body willingly betrays her; she will roam her hands down his back, beyond the tapered waist to the hard orbs. She knows that she is no innocent; she revels in his plea for her touch. Convinced that she is going to hell she wished she cared for her soul. “Honey leap with me, we will land safely I promise you.” “Oh God, Nicky you know it is never this simple.” Nick leans back far enough to bore into her eyes; staring to the depth of her soul. She prays he will stay but knows her appeal is futile. He feels colder already, it doesn’t matter how she tries to hold on he is already leaving; leaving her behind. ***

From my new WIP, Behind the Fan. “Come with me.” His breath is warm; his lips lightly touch her ear, it gives her a delicious tingle. This seduction is no accident. “Baby we can be anywhere, we will start new. Dottie, all I need is you.” She opens her eyes, he turns when he feels the flutter of her lashes. She expects another plea instead; he kisses her. Soft and slow his lips pulling her down deeper into a sweet chasm. This assault on her proprieties will be slow and subdued. He has after all proven that he is a patient man. Those musicians’ finger will trail on the column of her neck first. The touch is warm, soft nevertheless deliberate. Do the top buttons of her blouse come undone on their own accord or has he banished them? She is never sure but before she can register the affect, he lightly strokes the swell of her breast. It is sinful; no matter how often she confesses her weakness to the priest, she is never stronger. Her body willingly betrays her; she will roam her hands down his back, beyond the tapered waist to the hard orbs of his backside. She herself is no innocent, she revels in his plead for more. She is going to hell she wished she cared for her soul. “Honey leap with me, we will land safely I promise you.” “Oh God, Nicky you know it is never this simple.” Nick leans back enough to look into her eyes; she feels he can see damn near to her soul. She prays he will stay but knows her appeal is futile. He feels colder already, it does not matter how she tries to hold on he is already leaving. Leaving her behind.

From my WIP "In Hiding" Hidden in the darkness, she exhaled, releasing the tension. As she sunk into the worn cushions, Kate felt the wave of exhaustion crash over her. She dug in her backpack for the crackers wrapped in a paper towel. Closing her eyes, she ate, using her imagination to change the bland wafer into something more appealing. Retrieving her cell from her pocket, she shielded the artificial light with her hand as she set the alarm, always set to vibrate mode. The glow from the screen briefly illuminated her face. Her blond hair was history, the honey golden hue hidden under the dull dark cheap hair dye. Without makeup, she appeared younger than her twenty years, until you looked into her eyes. Here her anguish was center stage for the world to see. She barely slept and seldom ate. Worse were the dreams. Trapped in a surreal world, the explosion of gunfire surrounded her followed by blood splatter. Often, she woke on the edge of a scream waking in time to stifle her terror. She could ill afford this, screaming could bring him down on her. There were nights that she prayed it would, thus ending the torment for them both. Perhaps another night. Kate took one last glance around the room as she tucked her phone into her back jeans pocket. Slumping over, she was out before her head hit the sofa. Camouflaged she appears to be nothing more than a bundle of rags. Unseen in the darkness he slipped inside the house, blending into the shadows, he had waited patiently hidden in the edge of the woods, knowing she would seek shelter. Wayne closed his eyes and zoned in on her. Chasing this bitch was wearing on him; it was killing his focus. As his prey, she had developed self-persevering habits. She never left a trace of herself, not a sound, not a fiber or a hair. He drew a deep, silent breath, directing his senses, he concentrated on Kate, how she thought, what she feared.

What I have been doing lately from my WIP "In Hiding" is available on my website. *Strong language warning* Wayne sat in the hygienic emergency room trying to ignore the bitch of a headache that began radiating at the back of his skull. His worn jeans, a blood-stained t-shirt, and his makeshift bandage sat on a nearby chair. The hysteria created by his appearance in the small hospital ward had died down. A local cop greeted him as soon as he was escorted to the examination room. The conversation was brief, once he revealed he was a bail enforcer the topic changed from investigation to shooting the bull. The experienced officer shook his hand before leaving then joked he hoped this would be their only encounter. The ER doc was a woman about his age. Already the years of long hours, rotating shifts and the rarity of a personal life showed on her face. Her eyelids were pink-rimmed, her complexion sallow; all were earmarks of the effect of long-term exhaustion. Wayne knew it all too well as he rubbed his knuckle against his own grainy eyes. Despite this, she attended to him with an upbeat demeanor and even slid in some ribbing at his expense. He was defenseless, once the adrenaline dropped off Wayne felt drained. He accepted her volleys without a response. All he mustered was a smile and occasional nod as she stitched him up. Across the room, his cell toned, after the brief display of the number a woman’s image filled the screen. Under his breath, he mumbled, “Shit.” He intends for his exclamation to remain ignored, having caught it the doctor glanced his direction with a smile. Without invitation, she retrieved his phone handing it to him without comment. Wayne noted the raised eyebrow she failed to hide. The phone toned again as he glanced at the flat image on the device. The woman’s likeness was smiling brightly, her blue eyes dancing. Just looking at her eased the pain in his head. He swiped the screen and connected the call as the doctor finished taping his injury. Using his free uninjured arm, he held the phone away from him slightly, utilizing the speaker option. “Hey Baby.” “What the hell, Wayne!” Her voice filled the small area, in his peripheral vision he saw the doc smirk. Turning his head, he addressed the caller. “Babe, I was getting ready to call.” The excuse sounded lame, even to him. “Why the hell do I have to hear about this secondhand?” Wayne placed the phone to his chest, loudly he exclaimed; “F***!” The ER doc touched his arm, “I will give you privacy.” Wayne gave her a grateful nod. With a snatch, she grabbed the corner of the thin curtain suspended from the ceiling and pulled it close. Alone again, he refocused on the call. The woman on the other end had continued in her tirade without him. When he rejoined the call mid-rant, she was issuing him a heartfelt ass-chewing. “...bullshit Wayne that I have to hear about this from my cousin. We’ve talked about this!” “Honey...” She interrupts him before he can explain himself. “So what the hell happened?” Wisely he waited for silence to indicate it was his turn to speak. “Lou, Honey first I am sorry. You know I never meant to upset you. I am alright; it is just a flesh wound.” As he speaks, a sharp pain radiates across his side. Gritting his teeth, Wayne vows to continue without having the radiating pain affect his voice. “I didn’t want you to worry Honey; you know calling Cooper first is just business.” Silence. The woman miles away grits her teeth as she angrily brushes away her tears. Seated at the simple dining table, she takes a napkin from the center and dabs at her eyes. Mentally she reminds herself of her promise that she was done crying over this man. She takes an unsteady breath as she returns her attention to the call. “Lou, you still there?” There is something in his voice, the tender desperation he allows only her to see. Furrowing her brow she closes her eyes, an errant tear coursed down her cheek.

He walked away. It was a shame really, but what could I do? He was the law; I broke the law, two things one should never combine. From WIP The Trinity Saints

Yes. We were happy. We didn’t need Blijd to be happy. We were making it and selling it to the whole multiverse. Why we should have sold our dreams for what we already had?” “To be happier?” “There is no happier. If you’re happy, you’re happy” The Dream of Dandelions - WIP

everyone needs idle time, or slack time. If no one has slack time, wip gets stuck in the system. Or more specifically, stuck in queues, just waiting.

Small batch sizes result in less WIP, faster lead times, faster detection of errors, and less rework.

I...I want to be knowing a lot more about ya, W’ip.

I listen to Wes and Patty brainstorm ideas to reduce yet another dependency on Brent when something starts to bother me. Erik called WIP, or work in process, the “silent killer,” and that inability to control WIP on the plant floor was one of the root causes for chronic due-date problems and quality issues.

My Sweet Vivian, I’m so glad you decided on guitar, because you really suck at soccer. Love, Mom

By speeding up flow through the technology value stream, we reduce the lead time required to fulfill internal or customer requests, especially the time required to deploy code into the production environment. By doing this, we increase the quality of work as well as our throughput and boost our ability to innovate and out-experiment the competition. The resulting practices include continuous build, integration, test, and deployment processes, creating environments on demand, limiting work in process (WIP), and building systems and organizations that are safe to change.

Oh, god!" Charlie said then. "I forgot the whipped cream!" He grabbed a can of Reddi-wip out of the fridge and shook it as he walked back to the table. "Your dad said this was essential." He popped the top off and brought the nose of the can over the plate of doughnuts. "That's not what that's for," I said. Charlie paused and looked up. I stood and took the can from him. Then I squirted a dollop of whipped cream on the back of my hand and set the can down. "It's for doing this," I said, and I brought the hand with the whipped cream up just as I smacked down on my wrist with the other hand. The dollop of cream launched up in the air, and I opened my mouth, positioned myself under it, and caught it as it came back down. For a second, I swear, Charlie had a look on his face like I was the most amazing woman who ever lived.

In hindsight, we now know that WIP is one of the root causes for chronic due-date problems, quality issues, and expediters having to rejuggle priorities every day. It’s

work-in-progress (WIP) inventory]

Conversely, if there is an emergency that requires your attention, your WIP limit should decrease.

Recommended Reading Mike Cohn Agile Estimating and Planning provides guidance on iteration planning, including estimating the effort for user stories. David J. Anderson Kanban: Successful Evolutionary Change for Your Technology Business provides the guidance, definitions, and metric calculations necessary to establish an efficient software development flow, including establishing WIP limits.

stress reaches into the recesses of his mind and pulls out painful memories and—combined with his insecurities and fears—converts them into WIP. Moments of heightened stress can translate into more WIP than we realize, because we’re simultaneously battling our fears in addition to doing more work.

To find your work’s sweet spot, start by setting an arbitrary WIP limit, let’s say no more than three tasks. Add this number to your DOING column. Just

He turns around and resumes his pace, saying over his shoulder, “Tell me. All those projects that Jimmy your CISO is pushing. Do they increase the flow of project work through the IT organization?” “No,” I quickly answer, rushing to catch up again. “Do they increase operational stability or decrease the time required to detect and recover from outages or security breaches?” I think a bit longer. “Probably not. A lot of it is just more busywork, and in most cases, the work they’re asking for is risky and actually could cause outages.” “Do these projects increase Brent’s capacity?” I laugh humorlessly. “No, the opposite. The audit issues alone could tie up Brent for the next year.” “And what would doing all of Jimmy’s projects do to WIP levels?” he asks, opening the door

Although keeping a separate “parking lot” for blocked items might seem like a good idea, we advise against it. It’s basically the same thing as saying that it’s OK to be blocked—“Look, we even have a dedicated area on the board for it!” Keeping the blocked item in its column keeps it in your face, affects your amount of WIP, and forces you to constantly have to consider it during standups.

They also knew that until code is in production, no value is actually being generated, because it’s merely WIP stuck in the system.

Improving flow through the technology value stream is essential to achieving DevOps outcomes. We do this by making work visible, limiting WIP, reducing batch sizes and the number of handoffs, continually identifying and evaluating our constraints, and eliminating hardships in our daily work.

When Deleuze and Guattari argue that Pascal and Kierkegaard model an act of founding paradigmatic for all of modern philosophy, they contend that, after the collapse of scholasticism, all modern philosophy becomes involved in a peculiar ordeal, an ordeal otherwise known as the “justification of belief” (WIP,

WIP Society

this little note captures the essence of WIP limits: focus on finishing things rather than starting things!

in philosophy to rival Socrates's ironic stance with one that is humorous, even absurd (WIP, 74). If Socrates is ironic because, tragically, he knows something that in some sense cannot be said, Pascal and Kierkegaard face the comic necessity of saying something that cannot in fact be known, let alone understood.

As I'm a WIP (work in progress) whip me if I'm wrong or disgress, but time has no excuse to age us at all, no use when all that we feel is being ageless!

Lots of productivity tools recommend breaking work into small chunks. Smaller tasks are easier to comprehend and complete. When you take on smaller tasks, you’ve invested less time in the product, reducing the cost of change and failure. On its own, controlling task size serves as a poor man’s WIP limit. Simply making tasks smaller isn’t enough; small, unmanaged tasks can accumulate and overwhelm. Reducing task size is only truly effective when coupled with limiting WIP: tasks are completed sooner, results become measurable, and existential overhead is kept to a minimum. Therefore, we should focus on limiting WIP and completing tasks first, and make task size reduction a secondary concern.

One of the biggest advantages of these three demand-focused approaches, demand blocking, WIP purging, and flexible requirements, is the speed with which they can be executed.

Overloading teams and ARTs with more work than can be reasonably accomplished causes too much WIP, which confuses priorities, causes frequent context switching, and increases overhead and wait times. Like a crowded highway at rush hour, there is simply no upside to having more WIP than the system can handle. Experience shows that excess WIP drives high utilization, which results in the inability to respond to change, burnout, late product launches, reduced profits, and poor economic outcomes.

The first step to correct the problem is to make the current WIP visible to all stakeholders. The simple Kanban board in Figure 4-8 provides one example of how to do this.

The solution is to design and use a workflow system that does the following five things: Make work visible. Limit work-in-progress (WIP). Measure and manage the flow of work. Prioritize effectively (this one may be a challenge, but stay with me—I’ll show you how). Make adjustments based on learnings from feedback and metrics.

When companies switch to this kind of production, their warehouses immediately shrink, as the amount of just-in-case inventory [called work-in-progress (WIP) inventory] is reduced dramatically. This almost magical shrinkage of WIP is where lean manufacturing gets its name. It’s as if the whole supply chain suddenly went on a diet.

Startups struggle to see their work-in-progress inventory. When factories have excess WIP, it literally piles up on the factory floor. Because most startup work is intangible, it’s not nearly as visible. For example, all the work that goes into designing the minimum viable product is—until the moment that product is shipped—just WIP inventory. Incomplete designs, not-yet-validated assumptions, and most business plans are WIP. Almost every Lean Startup technique we’ve discussed so far works its magic in two ways: by converting push methods to pull and reducing batch size. Both have the net effect of reducing WIP.

When r&d capital is locked up as wip for more than a year, not returning cash back to the business, it becomes almost impossible to pay back the business,

We’re going way too slowly, with too much wip and too many features in flight. We need to make our releases smaller and shorter and deliver cash back faster, so we can beat the internal hurdle rate.

excess Work In Process (WIP) produces multitasking (lowering productivity), unpredictability (lowering trust and engagement), and burnout (lowering everything).

What that graph says is that everyone needs idle time, or slack time. If no one has slack time, wip gets stuck in the system. Or more specifically, stuck in queues, just waiting.

On one very large project in Australia, the company contracted a cruise ship to hold additional craft workers. Eventually, the ship was removed, and with it, its many craft workers. What happened next? More work got done. How can that be? Because the surplus of workers was just creating increased WIP. Stuffing a project full of workers cannot invalidate the law of the bottleneck no matter how many cruise ships you have docked off the Gold Coast. The bottleneck is the bottleneck. You can cut pipes all day and night, but if you can’t weld them at the same rate, there’s a queue. Cost and risk increase as time gets extended.

Service providers and product suppliers have learned to use WIP to shield their labor from upstream variability and to enable optimization of their capacity. But what is good for them locally is disastrous for the owner of the facility. As the time between operations increases, so does the duration of the schedule and the cost of the project. This is the hidden opportunity—manage the WIP.

reducing WIP and the associated queue time is a significant opportunity.