Your Kanban team has been tracking their flow metrics, and you notice the average cycle time has increased from 4 days to 7 days over the past month. The team's WIP limits haven't changed, and the work item types are consistent with previous months. During a team discussion, you discover that items are spending significantly more time in the 'Code Review' column, often waiting 2-3 days before being reviewed. Team members mention they're focused on completing their own work before reviewing others' contributions. What should the team do to address this issue?

Question

Accepted Answer

The correct answer is C. Kanban principles emphasize managing flow and limiting WIP to optimize cycle time. The core issue is that work is piling up in Code Review, creating a bottleneck. Implementing a pull-based policy where the team prioritizes finishing work in progress (including reviews) before starting new work addresses the root cause by promoting collaboration and reducing wait time (ECO Process Task 5.2 on continuous improvement). This approach maintains quality while improving flow. Option B is the main distractor because while dedicated reviewers might speed up reviews initially, it creates silos, reduces team flexibility, reduces collective code ownership, and doesn't address the cultural issue of prioritizing starting new work over completing existing work. Option A would actually worsen the problem by allowing more queuing, and option D eliminates an important quality gate rather than fixing the process.

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