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FYK: Kanban Metric Essentials - Work in Process (WIP) Limits - YouTube
Channel: Agile for Humans
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all right welcome to
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this week's episode of fixing your
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kanban
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we are professional kanban trainers ryan
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ripley todd miller and of course
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daniel vicanti gentlemen how's how we
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doing this week
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i was doing great until i saw dan
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that's not nice that's not nice
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i always have to take a shot at that i'm
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doing great all right
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i didn't mean that love dan love talking
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with dan love hanging out with dan
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so yeah we know we know it's always a
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pleasure
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uh getting a chance to to pull dan out
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of the the crazy world the the crazy
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kanban life that he's living
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and uh getting some time with him we
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always enjoy it
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and so this uh this week we thought um
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let's dive into some of the
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the lean metrics right the metrics are
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are really
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interesting i think this week we're
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going to talk about about some whip
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limits
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what do you think so dan at a super high
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level when when companies come to say
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dan dan our whip limits are crazy or we
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need to
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know more and how should we use these
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and you know where do you start
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like what would be the if you were to do
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a survey
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you know not d because i think we could
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do 20 videos about whip limits
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but if you were to do a survey what
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would that look like
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of whip limits well so let's i mean
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we'll
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we'll take a step back maybe us for a
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second first
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most people the the reason we talked a
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little bit about this before we started
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recording the
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the reason that i kind of want to
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started with with whip
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as a metric is because that's that's the
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one that most people associate with
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kanban
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and fundamentally if you're not
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controlling work and progress you're not
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doing compounds
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it's it's as simple as that so so you
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have to control whip
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which i think is where your question
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comes from ryan is okay well now if
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that's really the case if i have to
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control troll whip um
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you know how how do i do that uh you
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know and and what do i do
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a spoiler alert though for some later
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videos
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even though most people associate work
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and pro
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whip with kanban it's probably not the
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most important metric
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uh so you'll have to wait for maybe week
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four
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of this series to uh to get that answer
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all right um
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so the reason you you asked about 50
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questions
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yeah yeah but we're just super high
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level yeah you know
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but but i love your i love your the way
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you started this
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if you're not controlling whip you're
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not doing kanban
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yeah right so what is it about
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controlling whip damn that that really
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brings
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the the kanban flavor into your practice
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why is it so important
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uh because from uh without going
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without going too deep into little's law
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and maybe that's a topic for another 20
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videos
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as well so so much so much bad stuff
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about little's law out there
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but from a from a system stability
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perspective
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from a little's law system stability
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perspective
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if you don't control whip then you don't
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have have stability
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and from stability is where we get all
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the other good things
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that people are looking for you know
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predictability of value delivery
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effectiveness of your process efficiency
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of your process et cetera et cetera et
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cetera
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all of that pretty much begins and ends
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with controlling work in progress
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if you don't control work in progress
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you've got no shot at stability
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uh and if you don't doesn't guarantee
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stability by the way but if you're not
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controlling work in progress you've got
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no shot at it
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and if you don't have a stable system
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then you don't have a predictable one
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you don't have a value optimized one
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etcetera etcetera etcetera so that's the
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big reason i think why
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my work in progress rightfully is so
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important
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you know it's one thing i think that
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that uh
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that we may get confused a little bit
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out in the world or gets confused quite
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a bit you know we're talking about
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controlling work in progress i i think
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that some people think that
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the only way to do that is to limit whip
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on a column
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right when you could really just look at
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all of the whip that you have
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across the whole system that your your
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process right so
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um tell us a little bit about that dan
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how
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uh how maybe just being cognizant of
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what work you have in progress
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might lead you down the path of being
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able to have it under control
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is that fair to say am i yeah absolutely
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it's it's really strange
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when todd gets something right but
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you're you're absolutely correct
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i knew it comes back i knew it was going
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back i like it
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i like the like the boomerang
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no no but but but in all seriousness
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todd's he's
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exactly right um and this is why i'm
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assuming all of our listeners have
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or watchers have read the kanban guide
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and in the combine guide
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you will see that what we care about is
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that you you control whip
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we don't care how you do it there's all
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kinds of way to do it most people think
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that you have to do it by column
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absolutely not in fact
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in many contexts you know doing column
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whip limits is the worst thing you can
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do
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or one of the worst things you can do i
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don't want to say the worst thing um
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but yeah you you can set a work in
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progress assuming over the whole board
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uh you can group work on progress limits
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across multiple columns
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you can set work and progress limits uh
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you know on swim lanes
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you could even you know god forbid even
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do per person with whip limits i mean i
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mean there's there's
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all kinds of ways the sky's the limit in
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terms of how you want to
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limit work in progress so don't
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necessarily get into this
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into this rut thinking oh well i read
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somewhere you have to do column whip
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limits
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no in fact in a lot of ways and this
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kind of gets back to ryan's earlier
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questions
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in a lot of ways an earlier uh an easier
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way
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to start is setting one big work in
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progress summit for your whole board
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yeah you know and see how that goes uh
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and then and then watch flow
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and then kind of tweak with um you know
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other strategies for for limiting whip
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based on how you're you're watching flow
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that way
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i think that's a really interesting way
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to talk about um like a getting started
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maybe again let's have that the list of
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videos because getting started that
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would
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that would be uh that would be a way
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that you could uh get started just by
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being cognizant of what your work in
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progress is now setting a limit on it
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and then building from
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improving from there because that's one
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of the things that we do is continuously
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improve
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right that's a principle well and i
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think why you know just straight from
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the
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the com the the kanban guide at
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kanbanguides.org
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is the side effect of controlling whip
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is that it creates a pull system
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and that is at the root of a kanban
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system right we are trying to create
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pull systems
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that whip limit or controlling whip
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through whip limits
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creates that pull system it gets us
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started in that in that right direction
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you know of trying to pull things in as
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as opposed to things being pushed
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and uh i think that's a great way to to
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kind of frame this first discussion we
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have some
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you know i like the fact that we took it
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into a practical direction right
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get started just set an overall limit of
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work for your team
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start there right and then start
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figuring out column by column or
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however it works out but over time
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refine that whip limit
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into into a stable system
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which then becomes predictable right so
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that's we're not doing the metric to
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measure the metric we're doing the
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metric because it creates the pull
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system it leads to stability
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which leads to the predictability we
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need to then do some of the other
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forecasting advance and advanced things
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that come
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from a a well-structured and controlled
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system
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right exactly and just just a quick
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shout out to scrum
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you know everything that you just said
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there ryan i would argue um
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is a reason that scrum as a framework
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exists scrum is a pull system a lot of
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people don't think about scrum as a pull
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system but scrum
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is is a pull system now certainly can be
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operated
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um in not a post-system way but the
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framework as designed
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is a pull system to try and get all the
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benefits that you just mentioned there
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right
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right yep thanks for that dan i think
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it's a good recap it's a good
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good thing to think about how scrum
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brings these things into play as well
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uh but i do want to leave everybody with
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this last thought here that really is
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what dan started with
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if you're not controlling whip you are
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not doing kanban this is how you bring
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your practices back to the essence of
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kanban this is the pro kanban stance
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control your whip and that's a great way
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to lead into these pull systems and some
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of the other topics
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that we'll be covering later on so dan
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we really appreciate uh
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appreciate your time i know you're busy
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thanks for uh you know helping us with
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this important topic i think we take
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whip limits for for granted sometimes
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but there's a lot of great stuff behind
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them and maybe we'll do some more videos
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leave us a comment right let us know
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below if this is valuable todd thanks
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as always for jumping in and offering
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your questions as well
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i think we're going to leave it at that
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for todd miller and dan vicante i'm ryan
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ripley
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bringing you fixing your kanban be sure
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