Find Real Bottlenecks

Everyone's solving surface problems.

"We need faster code reviews." "We need better standups." "We need clearer documentation."

Then they optimize code review time, restructure standups, rewrite the docs.

And velocity doesn't change.

Because they solved symptoms, not bottlenecks.

The real bottleneck wasn't code review speed. It was that no one trusted each other's judgment, so every review became a negotiation.

The real bottleneck wasn't standup structure. It was that decisions didn't stick, so people kept relitigating them in public forums.

The real bottleneck wasn't documentation clarity. It was that context lived in three people's heads, and those people were overloaded gatekeepers.

Surface problems are visible. Bottlenecks are structural.

Value migrates to whoever can see past the surface to the actual constraint.

Here's how to find real bottlenecks:

What would have to be true for this surface problem to disappear?

If we fixed this, what would become the new bottleneck?

What's the constraint that makes this symptom keep recurring?

Follow the scarcity.

What's the one resource everyone's waiting for? What's the one approval that blocks everything? What's the one person who's in every critical path?

That's your bottleneck.

Fix that, and ten surface problems evaporate.

Ignore it, and ten process improvements accomplish nothing.