QamoosTech
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.