Team Lead interview question · Most asked
Your team has many items in progress and everything takes weeks. How do you improve it?
Summary
Limit work in progress. By Little's law, average cycle time equals work in progress divided by throughput, so at the same throughput fewer items in progress means each finishes sooner. Set a team WIP limit, walk the board from the right in standup, and help finish before starting new work.
Longer Answer
Example: a team finishing 5 items a week with 14 in progress has an average cycle time of about 2.8 weeks; with 5 in progress it's about a week. Lower WIP also reduces context switching and review waits, which usually raises throughput too. Start the limit around the number of engineers and lower it gradually.
Key Points
- Little's law: WIP = throughput × cycle time
- Team WIP limit; stop starting, start finishing
- Swarm on the oldest items
Deep dive: Limiting Work in Progress
Explanation
What interviewers look for
Understanding of flow and a practical intervention.
Red flags
- Adding more parallel work
- Measuring individual utilisation
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