Practical relevance - Bottlenecks arise at all levels:
• Team level: e.g., too few testers, slow code review.
• ART level: Feature depends on a team of specialists.
• Portfolio level: Management decisions take too long.
Specific practices:
• Visualization with Kanban systems and metrics (cumulative flow diagram).
• Bottleneck swarming: Teams focus together on relieving the bottleneck.
• Capacity balancing: Reallocation of resources or enabling teams.
• Automation: e.g., test automation reduces bottlenecks in QA.
Typical misunderstandings
❌ "Bottlenecks are only technical problems" – in reality, they are often organizational (decisions, dependencies).
❌ "Only the bottleneck team needs to work faster" – no, the entire organization needs to understand and relieve bottlenecks.
❌ "Once eliminated, solved forever" – bottlenecks migrate: when one is solved, the next one emerges in the system.
Relevance for organizations
The delivery speed of a system is always determined by the bottleneck (see Theory of Constraints, Eliyahu Goldratt). Ignored bottlenecks lead to:
• Congestion in backlogs
• Frustration and waste
• Quality losses
• Unreliable predictability
Systematically addressed bottlenecks, on the other hand, lead to shorter throughput times, more stable flow, and higher productivity.
Practical example
In an ART at an industrial customer, work piled up during the test phase. Cause: Only two people with specialist knowledge. Solution: Enabling team for test automation + cross-skilling in the ART. Result: Test throughput time halved, bottleneck then shifted to requirements engineering – where the next improvement cycle began.
Application outside of SAFe
Even without SAFe, "address bottlenecks" is universal:
• Lean production: Identify and relieve bottleneck machines.
• Kanban: Make bottlenecks in the flow visible (CFD, lead time charts).
• Change management: Bottlenecks are often managers who delay decisions.
Principle: Every value stream has bottlenecks—the trick is to manage them continuously.
How good coaches use bottlenecks in practice
• Measurement: CFD analyses → Identify bottleneck stages.
• Workshops: Systemic cause analysis (5 Whys, Ishikawa).
• Experiments: Introduce small changes (e.g., cross-skilling, automation).
• Management involvement: Bottlenecks are often organizational → Transparency for decision-makers.
• Learning loops: Bottleneck review as a regular event in ART.
CALADE perspective
We do not see bottlenecks as "mistakes," but as natural bottlenecks in the system that provide valuable clues for improvement. CALADE coaches work with teams and leadership to make bottlenecks visible, understand them systemically, and eliminate them evolutionarily—whether through technology (automation), organization (skill breadth), or culture (decision-making processes).
Related terms
• Theory of Constraints (TOC)
• Cumulative Flow Diagram (CFD)
• Enabling Team (SAFe/Team Topologies)
• Swarming
• Continuous Improvement (Kaizen)
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