What Are Kanban WIP Limits? Examples, Calculations & Best Practices

Want your Kanban board to speed up your delivery process? WIP (Work In Progress) limits are a proven way to reduce bottlenecks, improve focus, and ease your workflow. In this guide, you’ll learn how to calculate WIP limits, which tools support them, and how to use them to deliver more value with less stress.

Key Highlights

• WIP stands for Work In Progress and refers to the number of tasks being actively worked on at any given time.
• WIP limits help reduce multitasking, increase focus, and improve workflow efficiency.
• Key benefits of using WIP limits include increased focus, fewer meetings, lower costs, and reduced handoff delays.
• Setting WIP limits should be an iterative process, with regular reviews and adjustments based on team feedback and performance data.

What Are Kanban WIP Limits (and Why They Matter)?

Kanban WIP limits – short for Work In Progress limits – set a maximum number of tasks that can be actively worked on at once within a Kanban system. These limits are applied to specific columns, rows, or categories on a Kanban board to prevent teams from taking on too much work at the same time.

The ultimate goal of using Kanban is to help make projects as efficient as possible by cutting out wasted time and resources. So, WIP limits matter because they encourage focus, reduce multitasking, and help teams identify bottlenecks in their workflow. By capping the number of in-progress items, teams are pushed to finish current tasks before starting new ones, leading to faster delivery, fewer errors, and more efficient use of time and resources.

This means that if your team has a WIP limit of 5, no more than 5 items can be worked on at any time. If you want to add more work, at least one of the items that has already been started must be finished.

How to Calculate Your Ideal WIP Limit (With Examples)

As mentioned earlier, there’s no universal WIP limit formula. Here are a few ways to calculate and adjust them for your team:

Example 1: Based on Team Size

The most common approach is to set the WIP limit according to the number of team members plus one.

You will want to ensure that each team member has enough work to be fully utilized but that no one is multitasking. Adding an additional number to the limit allows for new work to be pulled in when there is a block on one of the items.

Example: Going by this rule, a team of 5 would have no more than six tasks in progress at once, a group of 10 with no more than eleven tasks, and so on. 

For larger teams, you can consider adding a +2 or even +3 to the number of team members. But be wary of overusing this rule since the goal is to limit the number of items that are in progress instead of creating a limit that is too loose.

Example 2: Focus on Task Completion

Some teams prefer to optimize for task completion. Thus they set a WIP limit that’s lower than the number of team members.

This way, as team members finish tasks, they can support those remaining unfinished until they are all done. Then the team moves on.

Example: In such cases, a team of 5 may have a WIP limit of 3 or a team of 10 may set their limit to 6. Thus urging the team members to collaborate on more tasks.

Such an approach is best used in teams where people collaborate on items or carry similar roles and thus can pool forces to finish items faster. Another case for this option is when a deadline is approaching and you want to encourage the team to finish the MVP.

Example 3: Dealing with Complex Processes

There might be cases where the WIP limit must be larger than the standard approach. A long process or unpredictable factors may cause this. In such cases, it may be wise to separate the ‘In progress’ status into more detailed steps and set individual limits for each.

Example: The team is working with clients and submitting their work for client approval. While waiting, they could start working on a new task, which would breach the Kanban WIP limit. In such cases, the team would benefit from different statuses such as ‘Working’ and ‘Waiting for approval.’ Each status would carry a different WIP limit.

Therefore, it is very important to monitor your teams and understand the process before blindly setting the Kanban WIP limit.

You may find that tighter restrictions work better for you and optimize progress, or you might find that having more tasks is better to optimize utilization. The best approach is to monitor progress, get feedback from team members, and adjust accordingly.

Benefits of Using WIP Limits in Kanban

You may wonder how limiting the items on my Kanban board helps improve the business goals. Here are 4 benefits you will experience with WIP limits.

1. Increased Focus

The more work teams and individuals try to juggle at once, the harder it is for them to complete items that have been started. This leads to inefficiencies and bottlenecks. Tasks take longer to complete, increasing the running costs and threatening project delays.

Increasing the focus on fewer tasks helps teams to achieve them more quickly – and typically to a higher standard – by cutting down on distractions, delays, or handoffs.

This also helps implement the cardinal rule of Kanban – stop starting, start finishing. Battle the biggest thieves of time to become more productive.

2. Reduced Need for Frequent Meetings

Another potential drawback of working on too many tasks is the need for excessive meetings or video calls to keep track of progress. This leads to time being taken up by meetings instead of project work, on top of the difficulty of synchronizing calendars, which again takes up more time. All of this can also lead to delays and increased costs.

Keeping to strict WIP limits reduces excessive meeting time, leading to fewer delays and higher productivity. 

Tips for handling virtual meeting fatigue.

3. Reduced Costs

Working on multiple tasks at a time requires constant context switching. This may seem harmless, but in the end, results in a higher cost of work. Unsure about this? Starting a new task requires focus and time to get into a rythm. Each context switch extends that time in regard to each task. Which can be avoided when working on one task at a time.

WIP limits can also help to reduce errors and the need for reworking, which is the typical result of lack of focus, inaccurate or incomplete data, and poor communication. Visualizing work and assigning sensible WIP limits helps to improve communication and reduce errors. 

Learn more about the cost of multitasking.

4. Reduced Handoff Delays

Kanban WIP limits reduce handoff delays because having fewer work items in process at one time; there will be fewer handoffs, making them easier to track and manage effectively. 

In summary, WIP limits offer greater discipline and focus, leading to fewer delays, better communication, and less wasted time and resources. 

Common Mistakes when Setting WIP Limits

One of the most common mistakes is setting limits too high, which defeats the purpose of using them. If the team never hits the cap, the limits aren’t encouraging focus or exposing bottlenecks.

Another mistake is applying a “one-size-fits-all” rule without considering team dynamics, task complexity, or collaboration needs. Setting limits without involving the team can also lead to poor adoption.

Also, failing to review and adjust WIP limits over time can prevent continuous improvement. WIP limits work best when they’re tailored, tested, and refined based on real team performance.

What to Do When You Exceed WIP Limits 

Exceeding a WIP limit is a signal, not a failure. It typically shows that something in the workflow needs attention – such as a bottleneck, delayed dependency, or overcommitment. When a limit is exceeded, the team should pause and review why it happened. Ask questions like:

• Is there a blocker that needs escalation?
• Are tasks getting stuck in a specific phase?
• Should the process be adjusted or broken into smaller steps?

Rather than rushing to add more work or raise the limit, treat the breach as a prompt to resolve existing issues and restore flow.

Top Tools With WIP Limit Functionality

We have shortlisted top3 options for software with WIP limit settings. Detailed comparison can be found in best kanban boards. Find out in that post how did we compare tools, and which ones excelled the others.

1. Teamhood – can limit statuses, status groups or even swimlanes. Most powerful and easy to set.
2. Jira – can limit statuses. Dedicated for enterprise organizations doing Agile.
3. Trello – can limit statuses. Best for personal or small team use.

How to Adjust WIP Limits for Different Team Sizes

WIP limits aim to help uncover inefficiencies and bottlenecks, ultimately leading to improved processes. This means teams should avoid the temptation to raise WIP limits so they are never reached. If you have persistent process problems, WIP limits will help you uncover them so you can solve them. 

It’s not unusual for your first attempts at setting Kanban WIP limits to go wrong. This is natural. It’s best to think of setting WIP limits as a work in progress, an iterative process that will take some trial and error to get right. 

To get started, ask the following questions:

• How many tasks does your team need to keep them busy and reduce downtime? 
• What is the optimum number of tasks the team needs to increase productivity?

Then, set initial limits and allow your team to work for a set period of something like two to four weeks while you track results. At the end of the trial, ask yourself the following questions.

Your WIP limits are too high if you answer positively to the following questions:

• Did tasks pile up?
• Did the team get overwhelmed?
• Where the team members juggling multiple tasks at a time?

Your WIP limits are too low if you answer positively to the following questions:

• Did some individuals run out of work to do?
• Where your team members stuck without work for an extended period of time?
• Did you complete less work than before, while the task scope remained the same?

Get the feedback, adjust the WIP limits accordingly, communicate them to your team, and then monitor results again. Using a constant feedback loop over time will help you to optimize your WIP limits.

Setting and changing Kanban WIP limits is usually very easy. Thus, you should not be afraid to experiment and test out the best approach. This is how you can set/update WIP limits in Teamhood.

Kanban WIP Limits in Teamhood

Multiple Kanban board providers exist in the marketplace, but Teamhood offers additional functionality that allows you to set Kanban WIP limits for swimlanes and statuses.

If you categorize Kanban items, this additional limitation can prove to be quite helpful for prioritization or planning. In the example below, you can see setting the limit for swimlane to 5.

On a Kanban board, a swimlane – or row – is an additional layer typically used for larger projects where there is a need to divide tasks. Swimlanes can be used for various purposes – prioritizing tasks or grouping them according to different projects, goals, or teams.

As such, you can use WIP limits on swimlanes to showcase the capacity for a specific type of work. This successfully indicates that additional items in this row will have to wait for a more extended period of time.

Using WIP limits is optional and depends on your process. It may seem like too much at first. But when implemented right can greatly improve the flow of value in the team.

Ready to start using WIP limits on your Kanban boards?

Now you understand more about how Kanban WIP limits work and how to use them, you should be well-placed to start using them on your Kanban boards. 

Alternatively, you can keep learning about Kanban project management to understand the practice better. You will find topics covering various terms and tips on getting started.

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