Why Limit WIP: We Are Drowning In Work (MemeMachine Series Book 3)

I love the blog and the book that started it all: Personal Kanban. So I had high hopes.Like the blog posts on which it's based, the book makes a strong case for why an organization would want to limit WIP. It makes that case really well -- this is the strength of the book. Five stars so far. Not much different than the web posts, but that's OK, that's kind of what I expected.But then, we get to the business fable stuff. This was... weird and disheartening. It maybe helped a LITTLE to illustrate the concepts. But overall, I think it weakened the book. It took the "learned helplessness" idea a bit too far, I think. The basic message of the business fable seems to be that the only way anything is going to change in any substantial way is if a senior leader starts making sweeping changes. Otherwise there is never going to be any change. That's not a very empowering message, nor is it really practical. That's enough to lose 1 star.Also, the book was a strange mixture of exposition and business fable. The exposition was blog-worthy but I guess I was expecting a little more depth from a book. The business fable stuff made it a little more interesting but just didn't go deep enough to make it compelling. Also, the book had a tendency to switch modes pretty often -- sometimes more than once on the same page -- which made the book harder to follow, for me at least. Lose another star.My recommendation: start at the Personal Kanban website and look for the Why Limit Your WIP info series.And if you want to have a handy printed collection of the same thing, with a little bit of business fable thrown in, then buy the book.

Great book. I love these "meme machine" series books for being quick, concise and easily readable. A lot of overap between this and Jim Benson's other books (Personal Kanban, Why Plans Fail) but still very educational. I've seen first hand in my company the benefits of limiting the amount of work in progress (WIP) can have on getting stuff done. By reducing the number of active projects we were able to drastically increase the number of projects we completed. It's counter intuitive at first, but it really does work. If you feel like you are always starting things and never finishing read this book.

Packed with great advice. I intend to order a paper copy that I can pass around to my managers a beg them to read.This book is short and it gives you lots of immediately actionable advice.You can learn about Kanban in lots of places, but the material in this book is gold that's not on any blog or YouTube video I'm aware of. If you get one book from the MemeMachine series, this is the one to get.

Jim's book provides an excellent explanation of why limiting work in progress is so critical if you actually want to be able to finish anything. Highly recommended for anyone who has more to do than they can get done and continues (as most of us do) to try to do more than is humanly possible. His approach to the way most of us look at taking on additional work and how we try to understand the capacity of others was especially valuable.

Nice book that is easy to read and has some great material. I highly recommend this book to young business professionals having difficulty managing a large workload.

This is a fantastic piece of bite size information.As a scrum master it provides insight and good arguments why management should allow the teams to limit WIP.Definitely a must-read.

A fantastic book! I highly recommend this book for any person in any industry. It's well written, informative, and provides solid information you can use immediately.

A great quick overview of limiting WIP and what it could do for your team. Very valuable to small teams doing a lot of work.

This book covers really well the biggest problem in companies currently. The uncontrolled work in progress that makes people multitask and get overloaded and burnt out.Consider reading if you want to get better results without creating harm in your workforce.

Having worked in a knowledge industry for most of my life, I have always been fascinated as to why so many IT projects fail. There is a simple reason and it is articulated superbly in this book. Anyone who is responsible for launching IT projects should read it and act upon its recommendations

I'll be recommending this to clients, as it highlights the human reasons for limiting WIP - not just the mathematical / systemic ones. It'll be fun seeing who recognises themselves as 'Evil Jayson' - which in my experience, is many of the managers in large businesses.

y, por un lado, comprobar que sus diagnósticos coinciden con la percepción que uno observa en el día a día.Y por otro, reflexionar sobre los consejos y pensamientos que ofrece acerca de cómo la sobrecarga de trabajo impacta negativamente en la consecución de los resultados perseguidos.Breve, interesante, esclarecedor.

This is a great mini-book with lots of information brought together on work-in-progress problems (and how to solve them). Recommended reading for software teams that want to succeed.