Avg Member WIP Age is the average age of a member's currently in-progress items — measured from when each item first entered an active state to right now. It's the best leading indicator of stuck work.
What it measures
For each item that's currently active for this member, how long it has been in progress. Then a straight mean of those numbers.
How Leanmote calculates it
wip_age(item) = now - in_progress_at(item) avg_member_wip_age(member) = sum(wip_age) / count(items) for items where assignee = member and status is active
Aggregation — straight mean of per-item ages.
Unit — hours.
Working vs calendar hours — calendar hours by default. A small set of organizations on a working-hours mode (Mon–Fri, 8h/day) get working-hours math instead.
Live — the value moves every day items stay open.
Bots and drafts — bot accounts are not auto-excluded. Use team mapping to keep system accounts out.
Team-level aggregation note
A team's Avg WIP Age summarized from per-member numbers is a mean of member means, not a pooled mean across every active item. A member with one very old item moves the team average more than they would if every item were pooled.
How to interpret it
Rising WIP Age while Throughput is flat means items are aging without finishing — the team is starting more than it can complete.
One member with sharply higher WIP Age usually has a single stuck item dragging the average. Find it.
WIP Age much larger than Avg Member Cycle Time tells you items are taking unusually long compared to past completions — re-plan or split.
What to do about it
Run a "stuck items" sweep weekly: filter for the highest-age items and ask what's blocking each.
Cap WIP per person so age can't compound.
Encourage finishing before starting new work — pull, don't push.
Related metrics
Work in Progress (WIP)
Cycle Time
Avg Member Cycle Time
Bottleneck Insights dashboard