Two activities in progress in Kanban

Question

I have a question regarding workflow in Kanban. Can I have two activities in my name in the "in progress" column? For example, I started the activity 'A' but not concluded and will continue at another time, then I get the activity 'B.' Makes sense to have activities A and B in the "in progress," but I'm doing only one.

Answer 1

I am a certified Kanban Coaching Professional, and this would be my advice:

Sure you can. Kanban itself won't say whether you can or not, it depends on how you use Kanban. The WIP limits might prevent you from starting another task, in which case you should do some or any of the following:

Discuss the issue with the team, perhaps it is ok to raise the WIP limit (or even temporarily breach it)? Perhaps you can solve the impediments together and continue working on the original task.

Perhaps you can "swarm" or help someone else with something else on the board. I usually like to start from the right-hand-side of the board and see if I can help some other item move closer to done.

You can also treat this as "slack" time, and work on improving the process, learning a new skill, or checking emails, or some of the other tasks that everyone has to do that are not directly related to the value stream. "Preparing for working on the item" is what a lot of people consider doing, but is usually just cheating against the WIP limits.