Reading the title I thought that the Inventory the author was talking about would be unfinished work. In our startup we often have many half done tickets, becau

Reading the title I thought that the Inventory the author was talking about would be unfinished work. In our startup we often have many half done tickets, because something else a lot more "urgent" comes along - or one of the founders (like me) comes along and changes the focus. We've come to realize that the real waste in our inventory (or like the author states: bodies in the swamp) is this unfinished work. This points to inefficiencies in our process. So whenever we realize we have unfinished tickets that have been worked on and open for more than a month - we know we have a problem in our process. Finishing tickets completely (as far as the tests/specs go) keeps our code sane, branches clean and helps us integrate earlier. A much better analogy for Kaizen principle of no inventory in software development is unfinished work.