WIP - Work in Progress

WIP, or Work in Progress, is work that has started but is not yet finished. In an SME, excessive WIP is one of the most common hidden causes of long lead time, unclear priorities and chronic firefighting. It makes everyone busy while slowing the system down.

In brief

Work in Progress is not only a production concept. It includes open quotes, unresolved tickets, unfinished drawings, orders waiting for approval, half-written procedures, active projects and decisions in progress.

Too much WIP creates congestion. Each item competes for attention, information, decision time and handoff capacity. The company starts many things, finishes few, and loses the ability to see what matters now.

The operational rule is simple: starting work consumes capacity before the work creates value. Limiting WIP is often the fastest way to reduce lead time without adding capacity.

Operational definition

WIP is any unit of work that has entered a flow but has not yet reached its output.

It has three diagnostic dimensions.

Quantity: how many open units exist in the flow.

Age: how long each unit has been open.

Location: where each unit currently waits or moves.

The relationship between WIP and lead time is practical and direct: when more work is open than the system can complete, waiting increases. This is visible in Little’s Law: lead time is linked to WIP and throughput. In plain language, if the company starts more than it finishes, time stretches.

Why it matters for SMEs

SMEs often keep WIP high because starting feels responsive. A customer asks, a manager opens a task, a founder starts an initiative, a technician begins a file “so it is moving”.

But starting is not finishing. High WIP spreads attention thinly, hides bottlenecks and creates false progress. People feel busy because they touch many things, but the customer experiences delay because few things close.

High WIP also increases coordination cost. Every open item may require status updates, reminders, reprioritisation and reorientation after interruption. The organisation spends capacity remembering what is open rather than completing work.

For investors and buyers, WIP discipline matters because it shows whether the operating model can convert demand into output predictably.

Observable signals

Look for many open items with unclear age.

Look for people switching constantly between tasks.

Look for weekly meetings dominated by “where are we with this?”

Look for old items that remain open because nobody wants to close them.

Look for bottlenecks fed with more work than they can absorb.

Look for projects that are active in name but not receiving real attention.

Common mistakes

The first mistake is treating WIP as productivity. A full pipeline is not automatically a healthy pipeline. If the flow cannot finish, WIP becomes delay.

The second mistake is starting more work to show responsiveness. This often makes the promise worse because every new item competes with unfinished work.

The third mistake is limiting WIP only in production. Administrative, commercial and decision flows also accumulate WIP.

The fourth mistake is not closing dead work. Dormant items occupy mental and managerial space even when nobody is acting on them.

Operational example

A services company has 60 open client requests and a team of five. Everyone is busy, but delivery time keeps increasing. A simple age analysis shows that 22 requests have been open for more than three weeks, and most are waiting for internal clarification rather than active work.

The company introduces a WIP limit: no more than 25 active requests in the main flow, and no new request enters active work unless an existing one is completed, paused deliberately or returned for missing input.

The first week feels slower because fewer new items are started. By week four, lead time falls because the team stops spreading attention across too many half-open cases. Customer communication also improves because the status of each active item is clearer.

Diagnostic questions

How many units of work are open in the flow right now?

How old is each one?

Which items are active, and which are only open?

Where is the oldest work waiting?

What is the current throughput of the flow?

What WIP limit would match actual capacity?

Practical implications

Start by listing all open work in one flow. Record status, age, owner and next action. Separate active work from dormant work.

Then set a temporary WIP limit. The limit does not need to be perfect. It needs to be visible and respected long enough to reveal the real constraint.

Create an explicit rule for new work entering the flow. If everything can enter, nothing is prioritised. If an urgent item enters, another item must be completed, paused or removed.

Review WIP weekly. The goal is not to keep people busy. The goal is to reduce lead time and increase completion reliability.

MARTRO reading

In MARTRO’s reading, WIP is a measure of organisational overcommitment. It shows the gap between what the company has allowed into the system and what the system can actually absorb.

WIP also connects process, bottleneck and cognitive margin. Too much WIP feeds constraints, overloads attention and turns decision-making into triage. Reducing WIP often creates margin before any structural redesign.

When to go deeper

Go deeper when everything is started and little is finished, when lead time grows without obvious technical difficulty, or when the company reacts to every new request by opening another workstream.

Natural next steps are bottleneck analysis, operational capacity, buffer and cognitive margin.

Frequently asked questions

Is WIP only for manufacturing? No. WIP exists in sales, administration, design, support, projects and decision-making.

Does limiting WIP make us slower? It may feel slower at first because fewer things are started. It usually makes the system faster because more things are finished.

How do we set a WIP limit? Start with current throughput and observed capacity. A rough limit that is respected is better than a perfect limit nobody follows.

What is the difference between active and open work? Active work is receiving real attention. Open work may simply be waiting, forgotten or blocked.

Why does WIP affect decision quality? High WIP fragments attention. People make decisions under pressure, with incomplete context, or postpone them because too many items compete for focus.