Splitting a team across every project at once feels like progress everywhere — but it pushes every payoff to the end. The batch finishes on the same week no matter how much you run in parallel; what changes is when each piece ships and starts earning. Cap the work in progressWork in progress: how many projects the team has open at once. The kanban mantra is to cap it low — finish what's started before pulling in more. and you bank the value far sooner.
Across the batch you bank 101 value-weeks — 57% of the 176 you'd get finishing one at a time. Juggling 3 at once leaves 75 on the table, for a batch that ships on the very same week.
| In flight at once | Value banked |
|---|---|
| 1 projectbest | 176 · 100% |
| 2 projects | 134 · 76% |
| 3 projectsnow | 101 · 57% |
| 4 projects | 69 · 39% |
Every row finishes the whole batch on week 14 — the totals only differ in when each project shipped. One at a time banks the most; full parallelism the least. The order you pick is the other half of the story — see Sequencing Cost for that lever.