Agile & TeamworkBeginner
Bottleneck
PronunciationBOT-el-nek
Definition
A bottleneck is a point in a process or workflow where the flow of work slows down or stops because the capacity is lower than the demand.
Where you hear it
In sprint retrospectives, team capacity planning meetings, and when analyzing system performance or workflow delays.
Examples
Code review is our current bottleneck because we have too few reviewers.
The database query became a performance bottleneck during peak hours.
Common mistake
Confusing a bottleneck with a bug or a blocker, whereas a bottleneck is a capacity limit that slows things down rather than a complete failure or error.
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