Have you ever felt that your Kanban board is chaotic, with some Work Items moving through the Kanban system unpredictably? If so, you’re not alone. One of the potential reasons why your Kanban system operates in a hectic might be related to work items and work item types that you define.
Exploring this topic can be beneficial if you care about wasted time, team frustration, unpredictable delivery, higher cost, and customer satisfaction. If you are:
- Co-creating a Kanban system and want to define work items and work item types.
- Service Delivery Manager or Service Request Manager, and you would like to review the currently existing work items and work item types.
- If you are an Agile trainer or coach preparing a Kanban training or STATIK workshop, you want to explain the concepts to others in an easy-to-digest way.
- Kanban practitioner who would like to understand both concepts better.
The difference between work items and work item types isn’t just theory—it’s a highly practical and pragmatic concept. The Kanban team is exposed to it during all interactions with the Kanban system. In this article, I will break down the difference between Work Items and Work Item Types, support it with easy-to-digest examples, and share insights on how to define them in a way that helps your Kanban system work for you, not against you.
Why do we differentiate Work Items and Work Item Types in service?
The definition of Work Items and Work Item Types in a Kanban System affects effective workflow management. Work item types and work items can help teams minimize bottlenecks, enhance delivery timelines, and prioritize tasks more effectively. This clarity enables teams to maintain the right level of focus on their work. Take a careful look at some typically observed benefits resulting from properly defined work items and work item types:
- Optimised forecasting and predictability of delivery – By defining work items and grouping them as work item types, teams can gain valuable insights from historical data. This improvement in the quality of analysis leads to more accurate delivery estimates.
- Improve follow-up and prioritization – by clearly defining work items and their types, we can make better flow management decisions. Acknowledging that different types of work require tailoring and making facts visible using Work Item and Work item typically leads Kanban Teams to better outcomes and streamlined operations.
- Efficient people and resource allocation – gaining insights into the distribution of demand properly categorised and named by work items and work item types allows for improved self-organisation of people and better resource allocation. This is achieved based on a better understanding of demand.
- Cost and time savings – task categorization can help teams avoid delays, enhance delivery flow, and ultimately reduce the overall cost of delivery.
- Improve customer satisfaction – Work items and work item types can help visualize customer expectations and manage flow more effectively based on this information. This helps in improving customer experience.
Service perspective
A service starts with a customer request, fulfilled through service delivery, which results in acceptance by the customer. From a service perspective, a request can scale from a task to the development of a product, project, or initiative (Kanban University, 2025).
Whenever we discuss demand and service capabilities, it’s vital to quantify and clearly define the requests that come into our service and the outputs we produce as a result. By identifying and categorising these requests, we can enhance our understanding and communication. This is where the concepts of work items and work item types play a crucial role, enabling teams, customers, and stakeholders to align on a shared language and improve collaboration.
To effectively manage any system, we must understand the demand and the expected outputs.
As shown in Figure above, let’s consider service as a black box for a moment. We input various demand requests into the system, and in return, we receive outputs in the form of tangible products resulting from the service delivery. In both scenarios, the characteristics of Kanban work items and their types are crucial. They help us quantify and define what is included in and what is excluded from the service. Therefore, clearly defining Kanban work items and work item types is essential for effective service delivery and for maintaining clear communication with stakeholders and customers.
Work Item
A deliverable or a component thereof resulting from the demand placed at the system that will be worked on by the service. (Kanban University, 2025)
In Kanban, a work item refers to a single piece of work that needs to be completed. It can be anything from a bug fix, a user story, a feature request, or even a task like documentation. Essentially, the unit of workflows through the Kanban board from start to finish. Each work item type corresponds to a specific kind of customer request. In that case, a Work Item can be treated as a deliverable or a component resulting from demand placed on the system that the service will work on
Work Item Types
A grouping of work items that behave similarly and follow the same workflow. These different types depend on the demand of the service and will vary in their form and size, specific to each kanban system. (Kanban University, 2025) On the other hand, work item types are categories or classifications that group similar kinds of Kanban work items together. Since customers may have different types of requests, these can be grouped into distinct categories. Work Item types can be treated as a group of work items that behave similarly and follow the same workflow. Understanding these types helps manage the flow of work and ensure that each request is handled appropriately.
Work Items vs work item type – examples
Imagine you are a barista customers can order various types of coffee, like an espresso or a flat white. Each of these is a work item type—essentially a request category. Let’s explain work item types. Consider how the customer prefers to receive value; for instance, they might order a takeaway or choose to dine in at the shop. For takeaway, the coffee comes in a disposable cup, and the customer expects it quickly. For dine-in, the coffee is served in a reusable mug, and it’s brought to the table, where the customers might enjoy a conversation with someone or do some work; in that case, they are probably willing to wait longer. Although both are coffee orders, they follow different workflows and have different service expectations. This will be our Work item types.
The next example, which is more software-oriented, might be more relatable to what you do at work. In a software support team, various types of work are carried out. This includes bug fixes, which may involve functional, performance, usability, compatibility, and security bugs. Change requests related to business changes in developed features and new feature requests encompass new customer requirements concerning the products built and maintained by Kanban teams. Each type of work can be considered a work item because it has different workflows and service expectations, like the coffee shop example.
In Kanban, a work item refers to an individual piece of work that needs to be completed. This could include items such as Security Bug. Essentially, it represents the unit of work that moves through the Kanban board from start to finish.
Work item types are categories that group similar kinds of work items within a Kanban system. For example, her team can define a work item type called “Bug,” which would encompass all types of software bugs, including functional, performance, usability, compatibility, and security issues.
How to define Work Items
Defining and discovering work item types for new Kanban systems typically takes place during a STATIK workshop. However, reviewing and refreshing work items in Kanban can occur at any time when deemed necessary. This topic is likely to be raised during one of the Improvement Cadence Kanban events, such as team retrospectives, flow reviews, service delivery reviews (to learn more about how to effectively conduct the cadence, read here) (Rola, 2024) or improvement suggestion reviews but does not treat it as a ground rule.
Building shared understanding
The responsibility and accountability for the Kanban system, including the definition of work items and work item types, lies with the Kanban team. Therefore, it should be a collaborative exercise whenever you are trying to identify a work item type. The only exception to this rule is for personal Kanban. If you are trying to define work item types independently and in isolation from your Kanban team, that approach is incorrect. In that case, I recommend refreshing your understanding of the six fundamental principles of Kanban related to change management and service delivery. After that, you can schedule a group discussion about the improvement and evolution of your Kanban system. Start with a reversion and remember what the Work Item and Work Item Types are above mention.
Trigger group conversation
Great group discussions are typically filled with the right questions that spark discussion inside the group. Below are some of the questions that I typically like to use to spark discussion.
- What kind of products do you produce to respond to the customer’s request?
- What kind of requests do you receive from customers?
- How do you currently refer to different kinds of work in discussions? Are there terms or labels that the team already uses informally?
- If a new team member joined today, how would you explain the categories of work they will be dealing with? What names would make it easiest for them to understand?
- What are the outputs coming out of customer requests?
Empirically verified and adapted as necessary.
It would be beneficial to apply Kanban principles when making improvements to the Kanban system. In Kanban, we focus on evolution rather than revolution, assuming that you have formulated a hypothesis before deciding to evolve your work items and work item type definitions. It is good to verify afterwards whether your planned improvements were real improvements.
If your team is still feeling frustrated after the improvements, and the work items and their categories don’t seem to fit quite right, that’s okay! It’s a great chance for us to look closely at what’s working and what isn’t. If sorting through tasks is still taking up too much time and delivery times feel unpredictable, we can definitely work on that together. Let’s take a moment to see how current implementations are serving both the team and our customers so we can make things better!
Conducting safe-to-fail experiments, analyzing the results, and planning your next steps based on your observations is the best approach to improving your Kanban system.
How to define Work Item types
Defining work item types allows teams to implement various policies, prioritize rules, and tailor workflows to each type. For example, a bug may need immediate attention and a fast-tracked process, while a technical task could be planned for a regular sprint.
By effectively categorizing work, Kanban teams can visualize and optimize their workflow, ensuring that each type of work receives the necessary attention.
The process of defining and discovering work item types is closely related to the process of categorising these items. Work item types serve as classifications that help group similar tasks together. As you refine your work item types, it’s likely that you will need to evolve these classifications as well. It’s important to note that this is not a strict rule. In my experience with Kanban teams, I have frequently witnessed teams that focus exclusively on modifying existing work items rather than redefining or introducing new work item types in the Kanban system. Therefore, I recommend following these three essential steps when defining work item types to ensure a more effective process.
Build shared understanding
I know I have mentioned this before, but I just want to emphasise that identifying work item types is really best done together. Before we get started, let’s make sure everyone understands the differences between the two concepts. It might help to share the definitions we discussed earlier to keep the team up to speed.
Differentiating factors
Effective group discussions regarding work item types typically involve an injection of several differentiating factors that can stimulate creative conversation within the group. It is often beneficial to map all work items on separate Post-it notes, allowing participants to group them later easily. The list below includes common differentiation factors that can assist teams in defining work item types.
- Demand for the Service
- Complexity of Problem
- Steps in process delivery
- Size and Efforts
- Skills and capabilities to delivery
- Customer expectations
- How output is released
Empirically verified and adapted as necessary
In the case of work item types, nothing is written in stone! Just like the previously mentioned work items, don’t hesitate to try out some safe-to-fail experiments and see what you can learn from them. Just keep in mind that the goal is to make your Kanban system the best fit for your and your customer’s needs. Enjoy the process!
The foundation of the Kanban system
Work items and work item types are the foundation of any Kanban system; without them, a Kanban system cannot exist. Improving the definition of work items and work item types will positively impact service delivery. It can save time, reduce waste, improve delivery predictability, and help make more informed business decisions.
If you need help with your Kanban implementation or support in your digital, business, operation or Agile transformation, visit pawelrola.com or contact me on LinkedIn.
Let’s work together to bring the organisations of the future.
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Bibliography
Kanban University. (2025, 1). Kanban.university. From Glossary: https://kanban.university/glossary/
Rola, P. (2024, 12). 10 pieces of advice to improve Kanban Service Delivery Review. From pawelrola.com: https://pawelrola.com/how-to-improve-the-kanban-service-delivery-review/