Name
Say what the thing really is, and what it is really for. Most bottlenecks hide behind the wrong name.
Tools: Value stream map, current reality tree
The method
Stop guessing. Find the bottleneck.
The bottleneck is rarely where everyone is looking. Five moves find it, one law at a time, through one made thing a week.
Where it comes from
The Theory of Constraints, for product people
Every system has one part that decides how much it can do. Eliyahu Goldratt called it the constraint; Levitt, Coase and others named its cousins. Low Tide teaches that thinking through made things, one a week, so that you can find your product's bottleneck before you spend another quarter on the wrong problem.
See it in a sample issueThe five moves
Strip
Take away what you inherited until only what holds it up is left. Some of what you build is a habit from a team that no longer exists.
Tools: Evaporating cloud, Kingman's utilisation curve
Find
Find the one step everything else waits for. Improving anything else is an illusion.
Tools: Five focusing steps with Little's law, fault-tree AND/OR gates
Check
Check which business you are really in, and which part you only rent. The part you can buy, your rivals can buy too.
Tools: Wardley map, Levitt's what business are we in
Price
Price the fix before you buy it. Exploit the bottleneck before you expand it.
Tools: Exploit before elevate, Meadows' leverage points, pre-mortem
The library
The laws
Every issue names one. After twenty issues you own twenty names for why things get stuck, and you can say in a meeting: this is Amdahl's law, speeding up that part can't help.
Name
Goodhart's law
Why a measure that becomes a target stops measuring.
Conway's law
Why systems copy the org chart that builds them.
The 90-90 rule
Why the last 10% takes the other 90% of the time.
Strip
Chesterton's fence
Why you learn why a rule exists before you remove it.
Gall's law
Why complex systems that work grew from simple ones that worked.
Path dependence
Why yesterday's choice limits today's options.
Find
Law of the Minimum
Why the scarcest ingredient sets the limit, however much of the rest you add.
The rate-limiting step
Why the slowest step sets the speed of the whole.
Theory of Constraints
Why improving anything but the constraint is an illusion.
Amdahl's law
Why speeding up one part can only help as much as that part's share.
Little's law
Why more work in progress means everything takes longer.
O-ring theory
Why one weak link drags down the value of every strong one.
The critical path
Why some delays cost nothing and others cost the launch.
Moravec's paradox
Why the easy-looking things are the hard ones for machines.
Check
Marketing myopia
Why companies misread which business they are in.
Jobs to be done
Why people hire a product for a job, not for its features.
Make or buy
Why the part you can buy, your rivals can buy too.
Price
Wright's law
Why each doubling of output cuts cost by a steady share.
Baumol's cost disease
Why handwork gets dearer while machines get cheaper.
Jevons paradox
Why efficiency can raise total use.
Brooks's law
Why adding people to a late project makes it later.
The planning fallacy
Why it always takes longer, even when you expect that.