Does a busy team mean a more productive team? Not really. And we can use math to prove it!
Today I learned about Little’s Law. Little’s Law is a mathematical theorem from queue theory that shows that the more work there is, the longer it will take to complete each unit of work.
You can also view Little’s law as a relationship between Cycle time, Work in progress, and Deployment frequency: Cycle time = WIP / Deployment frequency.
Here is a 5-minute video that clearly demonstrates the practical impact of this relationship:
