Tip #28 - Plan less and deliver more using WIP limit in Zoho Sprints

Tip #28 - Plan less and deliver more using WIP limit in Zoho Sprints



Hello,

It's been a while since we met with a quick, interesting tip. As the saying goes, "Too much of anything is good for nothing", today the focus is on delivering your outcomes with the right amount of planning. Your plan should be practical, calculative, and achievable for driving a qualitative success. 
 
Laura's plan
 
Laura has a habit of planning her project deliverables before assigning work to her team-mates. Once the plan is finalized, she schedules a general meeting with her team and assigns every member with a list of work items to accomplish. These work items run across different sprints. However, the team fails to accomplish a few of the work items as planned and the project runs overdue. Here, the problem lies in the ‘Planning’ stage where Laura predefined a plan without a proper analysis of her team’s capacity. 

Laura's plan becomes a problem
 
Replanning the same process over and over is cumbersome and your outcome would stand nowhere. Laura's problem is neither related to the work items nor her team members. The problem falls in the  PLAN and not the  DELIVERABLE. 
 
Laura's problem analysis phase

Laura's plan requires an intensive analysis before meeting with her team. She can streamline her analysis with:
  • Release notes: Analyze the total number of resolved and unresolved items in the completed sprints using release notes.
  • Team velocity: Track the average velocity of the team that determines the capacity of the sprint team to accomplish the assigned tasks. 
    • User based velocity: Track the individual user's velocity and determine the number of work items they can accomplish in a sprint. 
  • Cumulative flow diagram: Monitor the status based on the number of work items assigned in each status using the CFD chart. 
Post-analysis - Laura implements the Work In Progres limit (WIP)
 
Each status on the scrum board determines the sprint's success. You cannot add 100 work items in your 'To Do' status and later run them across different statuses. A proper planning of each status is crucial when it comes to delivering a sprint. WIP limit solves Laura's problem.



Using WIP limit
 
Each status can be set with a maximum and minimum value. This will help the team to stay organized. All the status will have a defined amount of work items without getting overloaded. It can also help:
  • If a single user is assigned with more work items in a particular status, the sprint manager can reassign it to the user with minimum work items.
  • If a status is overloaded, you can move items to the least occupied status to keep the balance. (For example, if you've 50 work items in 'In progress' status, you can move a few work items to the 'To do' status to maintain the balance.)
    • Number of work items
    • Number of work items including sub items
    • Number of work items including assignees
    • Number of work items including subitems and assignees 
Laura doesn't have to spend hours of planning, instead she can set WIP limit and deliver a better outcome. If you're a team struggling to organize a predefined plan and run your sprints, use WIP limit and make your work easier than before. 

Before we wind up, we are happy to appreciate the contributor for our previous spotlight. 



PS: Your feedback will help us for the betterment. Please comment your suggestions or queries below, we will get in touch with you. 



      • Sticky Posts

      • Tip #28 - Plan less and deliver more using WIP limit in Zoho Sprints

        Hello, It's been a while since we met with a quick, interesting tip. As the saying goes, "Too much of anything is good for nothing", today the focus is on delivering your outcomes with the right amount of planning. Your plan should be practical, calculative, and achievable for driving a qualitative success.    Laura's plan   Laura has a habit of planning her project deliverables before assigning work to her team-mates. Once the plan is finalized, she schedules a general meeting with her team and

      • Tip # 3- Working on the Scrum board

        Continuing from our Tip #2 on leading to a sprint, let's see how to manage the work items on the Scrum board.  Once you start the sprint your work items are automatically displayed on the Scrum board where you will actually manage the work items. It is a snapshot of the backlog items identified for the current sprint.    The layout of the Scrum board Simply put, the scrum board is just like a physical board with sticky notes on which the work items of the active sprint are displayed.  The scrum board

      • Tip#2- Leading you to a Sprint

        Product Backlog After the user stories are written and finalized, they are sorted to create the Product Backlog for the project during the Backlog Grooming meeting. This is a master list of all the work items that have been identified for the project and sorted by priority. Requirements are not constant during this period.The Product Backlog is dynamic and is an ongoing process. Every user story in the Product Backlog is customer centric. The Product Backlog includes: User centric stories based on

      • Tip #1- Why swimlanes?

        Lanes define a clear path to reach your destination. In Agile, swimlane is one such concept that sets a simple and clear process of the work that you do.   The concept of swimlane can be related to the pool, where the swimmers gather in their respective lanes to start off. Similar to the pool, work items are grouped in different categories. Each category is referred as a lane and is displayed in horizontal format. Swimlanes are effective in categorizing the work items with respective to specific

        • Recent Topics

        • Add Comment/Notes to Each Action in Zoho Flow for Internal Documentation

          It would be great if Zoho Flow could introduce a field to every action where we can make an internal note about why we are doing something with a specific action. This is especially helpful if more than one person from the organization handles automation

        • Questions about To Do

          1. I created a To Do note on Android and there is a line sorting option in the options drop down menu. But I didn’t find such an option in the PC client. I really need this option. 2. Why is there no scrollbar in To Do? When there are many lines, it is

        • Tip of the week 03 - Sending emails in batches

          Today's marketers not only want their email marketing to be efficient, but also smart. For an email campaign, you may think you have all the essential elements for lead conversion—a big mailing list, an attractive template design, and the most-engaging message content, but after hitting the ‘send’ button, you may not get the expected conversions. Wondering why? Here’s one of the major reasons. Many marketers miss out on sending the email campaign the right way. Did you know that you should not be

        • Sites Speed and Performance Grades

          I noticed that there are no recent inquiries or complaints about load speed or performance issues with Zoho Sites websites. However, I wanted to understand what Zoho has done to ensure that speed remains optimized, images are compressed and lazy loaded,

        • Feature Request - Configurable Payment Icons + Pay Now link in email.

          The PAY NOW buttons (icons) on invoices are really small. It would be great if we could make that a big, colored icon. Better would be to add a button to emails as well. 

        • Website Access Blocked (from one pc only) when attempting unattended access to any device

          Hello From one of my laptops I cannot access any remote device using unattended access. A Zoho Assist error page didplays 'Website Access Blocked. See attached.

        • Survey end date extension

          Hi, Is there any way to extend the end date of my survey? I needed more time in finding respondents that is why I need to extend the end date of my survey. Help. Thanks

        • AI read notes or explanation

          It would be such a great feature to have AI voices be able to read our Notes or Explanation If not having the AI speak the notes at run time, how about a feature where inside of Zoho Show you can have it look at all the notes of all the slides and have

        • Top Menu Disappeared from Blog Page

          Hi, Our top menu disappeared at Blog Posts page. However, it's still visible any other page on the website. I attached two screenshots, so it can be understood clearly. How can we bring back top menu? Thanks, K.

        • Managing Prepaid Hours for Consulting

          We are a consulting firm that bills clients a flat upfront annual fee plus an hourly rate and offer a discount for pre-paying a block of hours. Hours that surpass the pre-paid block are billed monthly at the normal rate. If there are any pre-paid hours remaining at the end of the project they are banked for future use. I'm not seeing a method of doing this in Projects/Books/CRM... thoughts?

        • ZOHO Widget SDK not loading in html

          I have this code below, I have imported the widgetsdk however I get the error shown in the image, I have tried many different ways of importing and initiating the function ZOHO but nothing is working. can someone explain what I'm doing wrong, if I am

        • Enhancements to Zoho Corp Help Center "Team Requests" View

          Dear Zoho Team, I hope this message finds you well. The ability to view both my tickets and my team’s tickets in the Zoho Corp Help Center is a fantastic feature, especially as the focal point for Zoho in our organization. However, we’ve encountered a

        • Allow Multiple Scheduled Appointments with Zoho Support

          Dear Zoho Team, I hope you're doing well. First, thank you for introducing the option to schedule support calls via the Zoho CRM booking link. This has been a fantastic enhancement, eliminating the need for back-and-forth coordination when scheduling

        • Projectwise budget ---

          Can we have a Project wise subject in addition to the Monthly, and quarterly ACCOUNT LEVEL budget?

        • WorkDrive API Documentation

          WorkDrive provides users and developers an extensive set of APIs to help integrate functionalities of Zoho WorkDrive with other Zoho applications and third-party tools. We have published the official WorkDrive API Documentation page for all external users.

        • Error 403: Forbidden When Updating Email Signature via API

          Hi Zoho Desk team, First, congratulations again on the excellent Zoho API. But, I’m encountering an issue while attempting to update an email signature via the API. Whenever I make a request to update the signature, the response returns an HTTP 403 Forbidden

        • Who can see draft replies on tickets?

          We have noticed that we are able to see draft replies made by other agents. Which settings can limit this visibility? It makes sense to me that admins and the agent who created the draft would be able to see the draft, but no one else. How can we make

        • Serious question: Are there actually "solo-preneurs"/small business owners who made Zoho-one work well for them?

          L.S. After already many years of continued struggle with Zoho-One, I am seriously wondering if there are actually solo-preneurs (one person small business owners - without a large, dedicated IT dept.) who got it (Zoho-One) to work well for their businesses.

        • Major iOS issues when accessing forms via the browser

          Hi, We have been using forms for some time, while the office staff are accessing the forms via the app on Android mobiles, we have a fleet of sub contractors that we would not like them having access to the main app as some of the forms are confidential

        • All notes disappeared

          I've been using the notebook app for over five years on my phone without being logged into an account. A few days ago I opened the app and all my notes had disappeared. Since then I tried restarting my phone, updating the app and logging into my account,

        • How to Iterate a Function in Zoho Desk Workflow with Delay Between Calls?

          Hi everyone, I’m working on a function in Zoho Desk that searches for a specific ticket record. If the ticket is not found, I need to retry the search multiple times with a delay between each attempt until the ticket is located or a maximum number of

        • How to Iterate a Function in Zoho Desk Workflow with Delay Between Calls?

          Hi everyone, I’m working on a function in Zoho Desk that searches for a specific ticket record. If the ticket is not found, I need to retry the search multiple times with a delay between each attempt until the ticket is located or a maximum number of

        • Work Orders / Bundle Requests

          Zoho Inventory needs a work order / bundle request system. This record would be analogous to a purchase order in the purchasing workflow or a sales order in the sales cycle. It would be non-journaling, but it would reserve the appropriate inventory of

        • Zoho Books API Limit Is RIDICULOUS!!!!!!!!!!!!!

          The 2,500 API call limit in Zoho Books is about as useful as AOL dialup.  Seriously Zoho, not only can I use up 2,500 API calls in no time with my own app but YOUR OWN STUPID IPAD APP blows through them super fast too, so if any one of my clients wants

        • QR codes in templates

          I'm excited about the new QR code generator. I have included a QR code that contains the record ID setting "${ID}" as input data. In the report detail it works perfectly but when printing it in a template the code is not shown.

        • Button Display Conditions

          Hi Guys, Is it at all possible to have extra button conditions? Context: We have data in our deals module which has a custom button which converts the deal into contacts + set up relationships between them. At the end of the conversion we set a field

        • Knowledge base: The nitty-gritty of SEO tags

          A well-optimized knowledge base with great SEO can benefit your company by allowing customers to find help articles and support resources using search engines. This enables customers to quickly and efficiently find the information they need without direct

        • Social Media Simplified with Zoho Social: Make the best out of the publishing calendar

          Are you a marketer who likes visualizing your plan of action before you start social media posting? Are you part of a team that works on social media on a rotational basis, so the most important task is to collaborate to avoid overlap and confusion? Or

        • Custom function daily limit and procedural programming

          Dearest Zoho Today, support confirmed that if I call a custom function from another custom function then I will use up two, with regards to my daily limit. A few times, we have blown our daily limit and that means that ordinary business processes don't run for the rest of the day. I have to mop these up the following day and there is no guarantee that I will get it right. Therefore, I can't afford to waste any. Procedural programming has been around for over 50 years now and it greatly simplifies

        • Unified customer portal login

          As I'm a Zoho One subscriber I can provide my customers with portal access to many of the Zoho apps. However, the customer must have a separate login for each app, which may be difficult for them to manage and frustrating as all they understand is that

        • Welcome Link Expired

          Hi The links sent to the users didn't get clicked on in time and now all the links have expired. Is there a way to send a new link without deleting them and re-adding them>

        • New enhancements: Changing portal users' email addresses and new customization options for templates

          Dear All, Portals have enabled organizations to extend access to various CRM modules to their customers, vendors, partners, and end users, per their business requirements. When a portal is created, an invitation email is sent to portal users with a link

        • Granular Time Frame Settings for Message Deletion and Editing in Zoho Cliq

          Dear Zoho Team, I hope you're doing well. Currently, the settings for message deletion and editing in Zoho Cliq are configured globally under: Admin Panel > Organisation > Configurations > Conversations Delete messages: Time frame to allow message deletion

        • New Built In QR/Barcode Generator Print Settings

          I'm trying out the new QR/Barcode generator field in Creator. I would think most people will want to print these, like I do. I am not seeing any way to control the height or width of the barcode for printing (inside the print/pdf template builder). The

        • Zoho One. Client Script

          Hi, I would like to know if the Client Script feature is available in Zoho One. If it's, how can I enable it?

        • Calendar View for Zoho Tickets

          Is there a way to view your tickets with due dates on a calendar view? I can not find a way to merge my Zoho Calendar and Tickets. This would be extremely helpful to my team.

        • Delete / Modify Default Career Site - Zoho Recruit

          Hello, It would be very useful if we could delete a default career site or change which of our career site is the default. Our Career site was created when there were issues with Zoho Recruit creating English CTA buttons on French Career sites. The only

        • Workflows for Timesheet

          Good day, Any way to have timesheet as triggers? I looked into Zoho Flow and into Zoho Project automation but no where can I have timesheet as a trigger. Basically, I would like to trigger something upon timesheet approval. Right now, the only way to

        • Is it possible to hide Developer Space for all user in Zoho Projects

          Hello! I am Zoho admin in a company and we want to use Zoho Project to manage projects, but after a few days of testing we are not able to "hide" the Developer Space from all kind of users except the admin. To sum up, I want to hide this for all users.

        • Introducing automation and utility conversations in WhatsApp marketing

          We’re excited to announce the addition of two new features to our WhatsApp integration: Automation and Utility conversations. These enhancements will allow you to streamline your marketing efforts and engage with your customers more effectively by automating

        • Next Page