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

    • Bulk upload images and specifications to products

      Hi, Many users have asked this over the years and I am also asking the same. Is there any way in which we can bulk upload product (variant) images and product specifications. The current way to upload/select image for every variant is too cumbersome.

    • Out of Office for Just One of My Alias Email

      Can I set up the Out of Office Reply for Just One of my Alias Email Addresses?

    • Can I map multiple Surveys into the CRM using the same fields?

      Hello, We are a healthcare practice that offers two distinct services (Nutrition and Primary Care). We use Zoho Survey for our lead generation form (Get Started Survey), which allows people to express interest in one of the two services and even allows

    • Dealing with API responses where integers have more than 16 digits

      Hi there How do I deal with an api response contaning an int or float with more than 16 digits (before any decimal places for a float). I constantly receive the response "Unable to cast the 'BigInteger' value into a 'BIGINT' value because the input is

    • To Zoho customers and partners: how do you use Linked Workspaces?

      Hello, I'm exploring how we can set up and use Linked Workspaces and would like to hear from customers and partners about your use cases and experience with them. I have a Zoho ticket open, because my workspace creation fails. In the meantime, how is

    • Can't change form's original name in URL

      Hi all, I have been duplicating + editing forms for jobs regarding the same department to maintain formatting + styling. The issue I've not run into is because I've duplicated it from an existing form, the URL doesn't seem to want to update with the new

    • Need Inactive accounts to be visible in Reports in Zoho Books

      I N=need Inactive accounts to be visible in Reports in Zoho Books to do recons of the accounts but when i see the same they are not visible in the Accountant - Account Transactions report

    • unblock e-mail

      please unblock my e-mails info@meatnews.gr and myrtokaterini@meatnews.gr

    • Add Zoho Mail for users who do not need Zoho One

      We have licenses for ZOho One for teams that need to use the suite of products that Zoho One offers.  We have 8 more people who only need email access and we would like to add just a Zoho Mail.  They do not need the Zoho One license.  We are currently

    • Zoho Projects - Q2 Updates | 2025

      Hello Users, With this year's second quarter behind us, Zoho Projects is marching towards expanding its usability with a user-centered, more collaborative, customizable, and automated attribute. But before we chart out plans for what’s next, it’s worth

    • ZML vs HTML Snippet - which is better?

      Are there certain use cases where one is better than the other?

    • Auto CheckOut Based On Shift.

      This Deluge script runs on a scheduled basis to automatically set the 'Actual_Check_Out' time for employees who haven't manually checked out. If the current time is past their scheduled 'Shift_End_Time', the script updates the check-out time to match

    • How to remove some users in zoho accounts

      How to remove some users in Zoho accounts.

    • Customizing Form Questions per Recipient Group in Zoho Campaigns/Forms

      Hello everyone, I would like to ask if it’s possible in Zoho Campaigns or Zoho Forms to send out a campaign where the form questions can be customized based on the group of recipients. Use case example: I have prepared 20 questionnaire questions. For

    • Infinite loop of account verification

      Hi I can't do anything on my zoho account.  I always get this message Hi Sheriffo Ceesay As a security measure, you need to link your phone number with this account and verify it to proceed further. When ever I supply the details, it displays that the number is associated with another account. I don't have any other account on zoho so this is really annoying. 

    • Load PO_Date field (Purchase Order) with current date in Deluge

      Hi, I'm not a full time developer, just helping to customize our CRM, in the small company I work for. There must be something wrong with me, because I can't do something so simple as complete a field with the current date in a function using Deluge.

    • Zoho CRM in Microsoft Power Automate Custom Connector

      Hi everyone, I’m building a Power Automate flow that integrates Microsoft Bookings with Zoho CRM. The goal is to automatically create a meeting (event) in Zoho CRM whenever a new appointment is booked via Microsoft Bookings. To achieve this, I created

    • Spell check sucks

      Come on guys, it's 2024 and your spell check is completely retarded. You gotta fix it.

    • How to include total km for multiple trips in expense report.

      Whenever I create a mileage report it only shows the total dollar amount to be reimbursed. The mileage for each individual trip is included but I also need to see the total distance for all trips in a report? How do I do this?

    • Outgoing blocked: Unusual activity detected.

      I just made payment for my Zohomail Today and have been debited so i will like to be Unblocked because this is what it says (Outgoing blocked: Unusual activity detected) Thank you i await your swift responses

    • Zoho One Login Issue - Unable to receive OTP

      Hi Support Team, I am experiencing a unique login issue with Zoho One. I am attempting to log in from India using Zoho Login credentials provided by a USA-based client. Their Zoho account is hosted on a US data center. After entering the username and

    • Question Regarding Managing Sale Items in Zoho Books

      Good day, I was wondering about something. Right now, Zoho Books doesn’t seem to have a way to flag certain items as being on sale. For example, if I want a list of specific items to be on sale from October 1 to October 12, the user would have to export

    • In the Zoho Creator Customer Payment form i Have customer field on select of the field Data want to fetch from the invoice from based on the customer name In the Customer Payment form i Have subf

      In the Zoho Creator Customer Payment form i Have customer field on select of the field Data want to fetch from the invoice from based on the customer name In the Customer Payment form i Have subform update Invoice , there i have date field,Invoice number

    • Problem of Import Client Users From CRM and or Expense

      I am premium plan user on Projects. I have about 500 customers on Expense and CRM that integrated with each other. According to at below link, I am trying to import clients from CRM, system not allowed to select any customer. If I import from Expense,

    • Unable to see free plan option

      Hello Zoho Support Team, I hope you are doing well. I am trying to sign up for Zoho Mail, but I am unable to see the option for the free plan. Could you please guide me on how I can access or activate the free plan? Thank you for your assistance.

    • unblock my zoho mail account. outlines@zoho.com

      please unblock my zoho mail account, outlines@zoho.com

    • domain not verified error

      Hi when i try to upload a video from zoho creator widget to zoho work drive iam getting domain not verified error.I don't know what to do .In zoho api console this is my home page url https://creatorapp.zoho.com/ and this is my redirect url:www.google.com.Iam

    • equest to Disassociate Bigin from Zoho One and Migrate to Standalone (Upgrade to Bigin Premier – 3 Seats, Annual)

      Dear Zoho One Support Team, I’m writing to request your assistance to disassociate (remove) the Bigin application from our Zoho One organization while preserving all existing Bigin data. After the disconnection is successfully completed, we intend to

    • SMTP email sending problem

      Hello, I've sent emails before, but you haven't responded. Please respond. My work is being disrupted. I can't send emails via SMTP. Initially, there were no problems, but now I'm constantly receiving 550 bounce errors. I can't use the service I paid

    • billing

      hi, I am being billed $12/year, and I can't remember why. My User ID is 691273115 Thanks for your help, --Kitty Pearl

    • How to add receipts

      How to add receipts

    • Unable to enable tax checkboxes

      Hi Zoho Commerce Support, I'm writing to report an issue I'm having with the tax settings in my Zoho Commerce store. I've created several tax rates under Settings > Taxes, but all of them appear with the checkbox disabled. When I try to enable a checkbox,

    • Does Zoho Learn integrate with Zoho Connect,People,Workdrive,Project,Desk?

      Can we propose Zoho LEarn as a centralised Knowledge Portal tool that can get synched with the other Zoho products and serve as a central Knowledge repository?

    • Zoho Commerce - Enable Company Name and Tax Number collection for B2B orders in Global Edition

      Please enable Company Name and Tax Details option on checkout settings in Zoho Commerce Global Edition. It is still important to collect Company Name and Tax Number for B2B sales in many countries. My business is based in Ireland (in the EU) and I have

    • ZohoSign and ZohoBooks Integration/Workflow

      Hello All, We utilize ZohoSign for signatures on tax eFiles. We utilize Dynamic KBA. Additionally, we use ZohoBooks for invoicing for these services. Is there a way to accomplish the following: Send a copy of the Tax Return, Invoice and eFiles in one

    • Manage monthly tasks with projectsf

      Hi All I run a finance and operations team where we need both teams to complete monthly tasks to ensure we hit our deadlines. Can Zoho projects be used for this. There many finance focused tools but we have Zoho one so want to explore Thanks Will

    • Zoho Suite is very slow

      Since today Zoho is incredibly slow over all applications! What's going on?

    • How can I track which zoho users are actively using Zoho CRM

      I have several licenses of Zoho CRM. We now need to add a new user. I could purchase a new license, but before I do, I would like to see if any of our existing users are not actively using the license assigned to them. How can I determine the activity

    • Is anyone else having trouble saving a custom image in their email signature, or is it just me?

      When I try to save the image I get an error that says "Operation Failed" I opened a support ticket two weeks ago and received a response that it would be debugged, but it still isn’t working

    • Combine and hide invoice lines

      In quickbooks we are able to create a invoice line that combines and hides invoices lines below. eg. Brochure design         $1000 (total of lines below, the client can see this line) Graphic Design           $600 (hidden but entered to reporting and

    • Next Page