PMGT5887 Chap.5 Kanban Flow, WIP Limits and Trello Boards
Kanban Flow, WIP Limits and Trello Boards
Week 5 switches from sprints to flow. This chapter explains Kanban as the unit presents it: a framework built on making capacity visible as it changes and keeping all work in plain view, with a board that makes invisible service and technology work visible.
It sets out the five principles on the slides and the six practices on the preparation page, the five elements of a board from cards to the delivery point, and the difference between lead time and cycle time, with a worked card history that shows how far the two can diverge. It compares Scrum and Kanban across cadence, release, roles, metrics and change, and adds where each difference shows up in Jira and Trello.
The second half is about flow: why WIP limits reduce context switching and expose bottlenecks, how to read a board where review is overloaded and testing is idle, how to run the 5 Whys to a root cause the team can change, and how Trello boards, lists, cards and Power-Ups support the same method. The worked board example shows how to name a bottleneck from evidence.
What this chapter covers
- 01
What Kanban means and where it fits
- 02
Five principles and six practices
- 03
Elements of a Kanban board
- 04
Lead time and cycle time
- 05
Scrum and Kanban compared
- 06
WIP limits and bottlenecks
- 07
The 5 Whys
- 08
Trello boards, lists, cards and Power-Ups
Worked example · free
Finding the bottleneck on a support board
- +1Fix holds 5 cards against a limit of 3, so the WIP limit is broken there.
- +1Verify is empty downstream, which shows work is stuck in Fix rather than flowing on: Fix is the bottleneck.
- +1Actions: stop pulling new cards into Investigate, and have investigators help finish fixes until Fix is back within its limit; then run the 5 Whys on why fixes stall.
Key terms
- Kanban Board
- A board of workflow columns on which cards move from left to right to show the status of every task.
- Commitment Point
- The point on a Kanban board where the team agrees to start a work item.
- Lead Time
- The total time from a task's creation, or commitment, until it is released to the customer.
- Cycle Time
- The time a task spends actively in progress, from the start of work to its finish.
- Bottleneck
- The stage of a workflow where work queues or slows, holding back everything after it.
- Power-Up
- An add-on that extends a Trello board with features such as list limits, calendars or card dependencies.
Kanban Flow, WIP Limits and Trello Boards FAQ
What does a WIP limit actually do?
It caps how many items a column can hold, so the team finishes work before starting more. That cuts context switching, makes bottlenecks visible quickly and improves delivery.
Why do the slides say five principles but the preparation page says six practices?
The preparation page splits the last principle into feedback loops and improving collaboratively. Both lists describe the same method; learn the slide wording for quiz answers and recognise the other.
Does Kanban have a Scrum Master or Product Owner?
No roles are prescribed in Kanban. The slides note that some teams choose to bring in an agile coach, but the framework itself does not require any role.
Which company makes Trello?
Trello Enterprise, a subsidiary of Atlassian, which also makes Jira. Trello is web based, built around drag-and-drop cards, and is used for personal as well as business work.
How is lead time different from cycle time?
Lead time runs from when a task is created, or committed to, until it is released. Cycle time covers only the period of active work, so waiting time before work starts shows up in lead time but not in cycle time.
Assessment move
Draw a five-column board from memory and label the five elements. Then invent a card history with five dates and compute lead time and cycle time both ways. Practise reading boards: for each, find the column over its limit and the empty column after it. Finally, write one 5 Whys chain about a delay in your own group work and end it on a policy, not a person.
Use Trello for your own revision board with To Do, Doing and Done lists and a limit of three cards in Doing. Living with a WIP limit for a week is the quickest way to understand why the principle exists and what it feels like when a column is blocked by one stuck item.
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