Software factory work in progress

Unfinished work is still consuming the system

Work in progress includes items that are not being edited at this moment. A pull request waiting for approval, a change waiting for a test environment, and a feature paused for a product decision all occupy attention and create future coordination. Counting only active edits understates the system's commitment.

WIP grows when work arrives faster than it completes, when a downstream stage is constrained, or when teams start new work before finishing existing work. More simultaneous work can feel productive while increasing context switching, queue age, and the time required to recover from a failure.

Use WIP with throughput and age

Track the count, age, class, and blocked reason of unfinished items. Pair it with completed throughput, cycle time, queue time, and change size. A WIP limit is useful when it creates a reason to finish, unblock, or reconsider existing work. It cannot fix a missing dependency or an unavailable decision by itself.

How Weave can help

Weave can surface WIP in pull request and review workflows, helping teams inspect which changes are waiting and what patterns surround them. Add the team's work tracker and operational queues when unfinished work exists outside the repository path.