What is WIP tracking?
WIP stands for work in progress, and WIP tracking is the running record of everything that has started and not yet finished. For each item it shows the current stage, the owner, the next step and the date it needs to get there. In agencies the classic form is the WIP report, or the WIP meeting: a weekly run through every live job, line by line, often with the client on the call.
The term also carries a meaning from lean and kanban methods, where limiting WIP is a goal in itself. Too many things started at once means each one moves slowly. Tracking WIP is how a team sees that it is juggling more than it can finish.
Why it matters
Why WIP tracking matters
Work rarely fails at the stages people are watching. It fails in the gaps: the cut waiting for the client's comments, the asset waiting for legal, the file that was finished but never delivered. WIP tracking makes those waiting states visible, so the question each week is not only what we are doing but what is stuck, and who can unstick it.
It also gives clients confidence. A clear WIP report each week tells a marketing team exactly where their work stands, without a single chasing email.
In practice
How WIP tracking works in practice
- 01
Every live job is listed with the same columns: stage (brief, pre-production, shoot, edit, review, delivery), owner, next action, due date and any blocker. The stages should match how work really moves, and waiting for the client deserves its own status, because it is the most common place work stalls and the one the agency does not control. A board view makes the stages visual; a table makes the weekly review fast.
- 02
The WIP review happens weekly, kept short and run in the same order every time. For each job, the owner gives one line: on track, at risk or blocked, with the action. Blockers get a name and a date. Jobs that have not moved in two weeks get a direct conversation. Work leaves the list only when it is delivered and confirmed, not when it is approved.
At RIOT
WIP tracking at RIOT
A series is WIP tracking in its purest form. The 17 instructor documentaries we made for SoulCycle meant many films in motion, each at its own stage and each with its own next step. Krova, the production software we built, carries every job through bids, schedules and budgets to delivery, because a film is still work in progress until it is where it needs to be.
Watch out
What people get wrong about WIP tracking
Tracking status without blockers. A list that says in progress next to everything tells you nothing; the useful information is what each item is waiting on. The second mistake is letting WIP grow unchecked. Starting new work feels productive, but finishing it is what clients pay for. If the list keeps getting longer, the team is starting more than it finishes.
And running the WIP meeting as a recital. If nothing is decided, it is a report that could have been an email.
