Flow: Kanban and Lean Quiz

14 questions covering Kanban, WIP limits and flow metrics and Lean software development.

Kanban practices

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Which statement about Kanban is true?

It prescribes no roles, no iterations and no ceremonies, and starts from whatever process the team already runs

Correct. That non-disruptive starting point is why Kanban adoptions often survive where a full process replacement would be rejected.

It replaces the existing process with a defined set of roles and events

It requires all work items to be the same size

It forbids any form of planning cadence

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"Make process policies explicit" exists to fix which problem?

Teams forgetting to update the board

Managers not understanding story points

Items being pulled in the wrong priority order

Rules such as what "ready for review" means living as folklore, so each person applies a different standard

Correct. Undocumented policies cannot be inspected, and therefore cannot be improved deliberately.

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A developer finishes an item, and the Dev column is at its WIP limit. What should they do?

Start the next backlog item anyway, since idle time is waste

Ask the Product Owner to raise the WIP limit

Help move an item out of a downstream column, since finishing work now outranks starting work

Correct. This is the mechanism by which limits convert individual busyness into collective flow.

Split the next item so it fits within the limit

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A team sets WIP limits so generous that nothing ever blocks. What is wrong?

Nothing, an unblocked board is the goal

The limits are too loose to reveal bottlenecks, which is the reason for having them

Correct. The point of a limit is that hitting it makes a queue visible. A limit that never binds teaches nothing.

Throughput will drop because people are idle

Cycle time cannot be measured without blocking

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When is Kanban a better fit than Scrum?

When work arrives unpredictably and cannot wait for the next Sprint boundary, as in support or operations

Correct. Sprint commitments assume work can be batched, and randomly arriving urgent work breaks that assumption every Sprint.

When the team wants stronger commitment to a shared goal

When items are uniform in size and well understood

When the organization wants to replace its current process wholesale

Flow metrics

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A team has 24 items in progress and completes 6 per week. What is the average cycle time?

6 weeks, since throughput divides the week

24 weeks, one per item in progress

It cannot be derived from these two numbers

4 weeks, because cycle time equals work in progress divided by throughput

Correct. This is Little's Law, and it is why cutting WIP shortens delivery without anyone working faster.

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Which pair of numbers describes what a customer experiences?

Throughput and work in progress

Cycle time and flow efficiency

Lead time, measured from request to delivery including the backlog wait

Correct. Cycle time starts when work begins, so it hides the queue the customer was actually waiting in.

Velocity and Sprint length

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A team measures 15% flow efficiency. What does that indicate?

The team is working at 15% of its capacity

Items spend roughly 85% of their cycle time waiting rather than being worked on

Correct. Which means removing queues will usually shorten delivery far more than adding people.

15% of items miss their target date

Only 15% of the backlog has been estimated

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On a cumulative flow diagram, a band that steadily widens over time means what?

A queue is growing in that state, which locates a bottleneck

Correct. The vertical thickness of a band is the work in progress in that state, so a widening band is accumulating inventory.

The team's throughput is increasing

Items in that state are being completed faster than they arrive

The Definition of Done was tightened

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Which forecast does a cycle time scatterplot support best?

"This item will take exactly four days"

"The team will complete 35 points next Sprint"

"Every item is delivered within two weeks"

"85% of comparable items have completed within 11 days"

Correct. Historical distributions support probabilistic statements, which carry their uncertainty visibly instead of hiding it in one number.

Lean

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Which is the software equivalent of manufacturing inventory?

Automated test suites

Documentation written during development

Partially done work, such as unmerged branches and unreleased features

Correct. It has consumed cost, delivered no value, and can still be invalidated by a change in priority.

Defects found in production

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"Deferring commitment to the last responsible moment" means what?

Delaying every decision until someone escalates it

Deciding at the point where waiting any longer costs more than the information waiting would gain

Correct. It is a deliberate trade of information against the cost of delay, and it depends on keeping the decision reversible in the meantime.

Never making architectural decisions before implementation

Letting the customer make all technical decisions

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A delivery team is measured only on features shipped per quarter. Incidents in production triple. Which Lean principle was violated?

Optimize the whole, since a local throughput gain pushed cost downstream and reduced total delivered value

Correct. Measuring one station in the line is the classic route to a local optimum that damages the system.

Respect people

Defer commitment

Create knowledge

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Which Lean waste do handoffs between specialist teams most directly represent?

Over-production

Defects

Extra processing

Transportation, along with the waiting that each handoff creates

Correct. Every handoff adds a queue and loses context, which is why Lean favors cross-functional teams that own work end to end.

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