Work in Progress (WIP) is how many items the team has in flight. High WIP is the most reliable early-warning signal for context-switching, overload and delivery slowdowns.
What it measures
A count of the tasks that are started but not finished. It's a snapshot, not an average over the period: one number describing where things stand at the end of the window you selected.
How Leanmote calculates it
A task counts as work in progress when the kind of its most recent status is neither backlog nor terminal:
Status kind of the most recent status | Counted as WIP? |
Backlog (kind 0) | No |
Done or cancelled (kinds 3 and 4) | No |
Anything else | Yes |
The kinds come from your board status mapping — that's where each status in your tool is classified. Leanmote does not keep its own list of "active" status names, so a status you add is picked up by whatever kind you map it to.
Cancelled is terminal too. Before that was made explicit, cancelled items were counted as in flight forever.
Tasks on excluded boards are skipped.
Tasks with no status history at all are set aside — they can't be placed.
Two things worth being clear about, because they're easy to assume:
There is no average WIP. Leanmote reports the count, not a series sampled over time, so you can't read "average WIP for the quarter" off this metric.
Assignment is not part of the rule. An unassigned task in an active status still counts.
How to interpret it
WIP rising faster than throughput is the classic bottleneck signal. Cycle time will rise next.
WIP much higher than team size usually means people are juggling too many items at once. The cost of context-switching is invisible but real.
WIP near zero with steady throughput can be healthy — the team finishes what it starts. Just check that status transitions are actually being recorded; a board whose statuses aren't mapped produces the same picture.
What to do about it
Set explicit WIP limits per stage. The most common pattern is
limit ≤ team_size + 1.Pull-based flow: don't start a new item until an in-flight one finishes.
If WIP is concentrated in one stage, such as review, invest there first.
Make WIP visible in the team's daily ritual so it isn't only a leadership metric.
Little's Law
WIP, throughput and cycle time are linked by Little's Law: cycle_time ≈ wip / throughput. If you can't lift throughput, the only way to shorten cycle time is to reduce WIP.
Related metrics
Throughput
Cycle Time
Avg Member WIP Age — how long the in-flight items have been sitting
Flow metrics overview