Picture this: You’re the conductor of a grand symphony orchestra, and your music is flowing beautifully. Suddenly, one of your violinists hits a sour note, unable to play their part. What do you do? Do you ask them to step off the stage, hoping the audience won’t notice the missing melody? Or do you pause, address the issue, and ensure every instrument is harmonious before continuing?

In the world of flow management, we often face a similar dilemma. When a work item hits a roadblock, our instinct might be to shove it off to the side — out of sight, out of mind. But this seemingly harmless act of moving a blocked work item could silently sabotage your entire workflow symphony.

The Allure and Pitfalls of the “Blocked” Column

It’s easy to see why many teams create a separate “Blocked” column on their Kanban boards. When a work item gets stuck, the impulse is to move it aside and focus on what’s still progressing. At first, it feels like a clean solution: the work moving forward stays front and centre, and the blocked items are parked neatly in their own column, ready to be dealt with later.

This approach is tempting because it seems to declutter the workflow. Blocked items are removed from the active stages, leaving your “In Development” column looking nice and tidy. The team can focus on the tasks they can control, and everything appears manageable.

But here’s the catch: out of sight often means out of mind. Moving blocked work into its own column means not only that it quickly loses visibility and urgency but that you also lose sight of where and why things are stalling in your process. The team naturally shifts its attention to unblocked work, and over time, the “Blocked” column can become a place where work goes to die.

Even more dangerous is the impact on your flow metrics. Separating blocked tasks from the active workflow creates a gap in the data you rely on to measure and manage performance. Your WIP looks artificially low, your work item age gets distorted, and before you know it, you’re operating on a false sense of progress.

The Hidden Costs of Moving Blocked Work

1. Time in State Metrics

When we remove a struggling violinist from the orchestra, we lose track of where precisely the piece became challenging. Was it during the allegro or the adagio? Similarly, moving blocked work out of its original state obscures where the actual delay occurred in your workflow, making it harder to improve your process ‘score’ for future performances.

When you move blocked work to a separate “Blocked” column, there is no overall change to the item’s cycle time, but your time-in-state metrics — the data you rely on to understand where delays are happening in your process — is now skewed. If a task is blocked while in the “Development” stage and you move it to a separate “Blocked” column, the time it spends waiting is no longer tracked as time in “Development.” Instead, it sits in the “Blocked” column, masking that the “Development” stage is where the actual delay occurred.

Leaving blocked items in their original workflow stage ensures that time-in-state metrics accurately reflect where work is getting held up. This provides better insights into where delays happen and helps your team make more informed decisions about improving flow and reducing cycle time.

2. Work Item Age and Service Level Expectation (SLE)

Another critical aspect impacted by moving blocked work is Work Item Age, which tracks how long an item has been in progress. The pace percentiles and Service Level Expectation (SLE) help your team predict when a work item is likely to be completed and whether it is at risk of breaching the team’s published delivery expectation.

When blocked work is moved out of the active workflow, you lose visibility into how long the item has aged in its original state, making it harder to use percentile-based pacing to monitor how far along a work item is compared to the typical timeline. Without an accurate view of work item age, it becomes challenging to take proactive action on items that are ageing too long, potentially leading to missed deadlines or SLE breaches.

By keeping blocked items in their original stage, the item’s age accumulates correctly, allowing your team to monitor it against your SLEs and make informed decisions about when to escalate or prioritize it. This active management of Work Item Age ensures you have a clear view of which items are at risk of breaching your SLE, allowing the team to intervene early and keep the flow moving smoothly.

3. WIP Overload

Imagine if, every time a musician stepped off stage, we replaced them with two new players. Soon, our orchestra pit would overflow, with musicians jostling for space and drowning each other out. This is what happens when we ignore blocked work in our WIP limits — we overload our system, creating a cacophony instead of a harmony.

When blocked items are removed from the active workflow, they may no longer count toward those WIP limits. This creates an illusion of available capacity, encouraging the team to pull in new work even though the blocked work still exists. The system becomes overloaded, with more work in progress than the team can realistically handle, leading to bottlenecks, slower throughput, and a chaotic juggling of work items.

The problem compounds when the blocked item is finally unblocked. There may be no room left in the workflow to move it back into its original stage. With the WIP limit already maxed out by new work, the team faces a difficult choice: either force the item back into the flow, violating the WIP limit and causing even more congestion, or hold off on resuming it, delaying progress further.

By leaving blocked items in the workflow and counting them against WIP limits, the team is forced to resolve the blockage quickly. This keeps the system from overloading and ensures that work can seamlessly continue when the blocker is removed without needing to fight for space in an already crowded workflow.

4. Throughput Misrepresentation

Throughput — the count of work items completed for a given period — relies on accurately tracking how much work is being finished. When blocked work is sidelined into a separate column, it can create an illusion that the team is completing more tasks than they actually are, as the blocked items no longer appear to be in the system.

This misrepresentation of throughput distorts your sense of how much work the team is accomplishing and makes it harder to plan future work. Keeping blocked items visible in the workflow gives you an accurate picture of what’s being completed and what’s still in progress, allowing for more realistic capacity planning and forecasting.

The Better Approach: Keeping Blocked Work in the Workflow

Instead of removing struggling musicians, a great conductor works with them right where they are, ensuring they find their rhythm without disrupting the flow of the piece. Similarly, keeping blocked work visible in your workflow allows you to address issues in real time, maintaining the harmony of your project’s progress.

This approach provides several advantages:

1. Visibility and Accountability: Leaving blocked items in their original workflow stage creates a natural sense of urgency to resolve the issue and get the task moving again. It’s much harder to ignore a blocked task when it’s still sitting in the middle of the work you’re trying to push through.

2. WIP Enforcement: When blocked work remains in the workflow, it continues to count against the team’s WIP limits. This forces the team to focus on unblocking the item before pulling in more work, preventing overcommitment and maintaining a steady flow.

3. Flow Continuity and Process Improvement: When blocked work stays in the workflow, the flow of work remains continuous — even if a blocker temporarily disrupts that continuity. Once the blocker is removed, the item can continue smoothly from where it got stuck without needing to be reintroduced into the system. This visibility also allows the team to identify patterns and make improvements to prevent similar blockages in the future.

Managing Blockers Effectively: Practical Tips

Managing blocked work effectively requires more than just keeping it visible. You can prevent them from slowing down your delivery by systematically implementing clear policies and tracking blockers. Here are a few practical tips to help you and your team handle blockers in a way that keeps the flow smooth and predictable.

1. Implement a Three-Level Blocker Policy

One of the best ways to stay on top of blocked work is to use a structured approach, like the three levels of blocker policy:

• Level One: Blocking Criteria and Timing — Define what qualifies as a blocker and set a time threshold (e.g., 2 hours or more) to declare something blocked. This keeps the team aligned on when to raise the red flag.
• Level Two: WIP Limits and Ageing — Blocked items should still count against WIP limits. If an item remains blocked for over three days, review it to decide whether to escalate, assign more people or resources, or shift priorities.
• Level Three: Cancellation and Restart — Establish rules for when to cancel or restart work that has been blocked for too long, e.g., after seven days. This prevents work from languishing indefinitely and allows the team to focus on high-priority tasks.

2. Tag Blocked Work for Easy Identification

Just as a conductor might use different coloured pens to mark challenging passages in the score, use visual indicators to highlight blocked tasks on your Kanban board. This helps the team see at a glance which items need attention and makes blockers easier to track during stand-ups.

3. Track Internal vs. External Blockers

Distinguish between issues within your orchestra (internal blockers) and those caused by external factors (like a malfunctioning stage light or a noisy audience). This helps you address each type of disruption appropriately.

Keep a log of internal and external blockers to identify patterns over time. For example, if a particular external dependency keeps causing delays, it might be time to renegotiate expectations with that team or vendor.

4. Use Blocker Clustering to Identify Patterns

Blocked work isn’t just temporary; it can be a symptom of more significant, recurring problems. Group similar types of blockers together and analyze them in retrospectives. Blocker clustering helps identify common causes, such as a recurring external dependency or a specific workflow stage where work frequently gets stuck. Once you see patterns, you can make systemic improvements to reduce the likelihood of future blockers.

5. Set Clear Escalation Paths

Don’t let blocked work sit for too long without resolution. Establish clear escalation paths if a blocker can’t be cleared within a set time (e.g., three days). Whether involving a project manager, escalating to leadership, or reaching out to an external vendor, having a plan in place ensures that blockers don’t fall through the cracks.

By following these tips and implementing the three levels of blocker policy, you can create a system where blockers are identified, tracked, and resolved quickly — without disrupting your flow.

Conclusion: Unblock Your Flow

Remember, a great symphony isn’t just about playing the right notes — it’s about how all the parts come together. By addressing blockers where they occur, you ensure that every section of your project orchestra can play its part, creating a harmonious and successful performance from start to finish.

Focus on keeping your flow smooth by addressing blockers in place, not by pushing them aside. After all, flow interrupted is flow broken, and the longer you ignore a problem, the harder it becomes to fix. Keep those blockers visible, and keep your team accountable. By doing so, you’ll maintain the integrity of your workflow, keep your metrics accurate, and ultimately deliver value more efficiently and predictably.