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Make sense of queues, work in progress, forecasting, and team capacity. These concepts explain why a busy team can still struggle to finish work.
Terms beginning with B
11 termsBacklog aging
Backlog aging is the elapsed time since a work item entered a backlog or became ready for consideration. It shows how long demand has waited before entering active delivery.
Flow and capacity planningBacklog health
Backlog health is an assessment of whether queued work has enough clarity, relevance, and prioritization to support reliable replenishment. It is a judgment supported by measures rather than a single universal score.
Flow and capacity planningBacklog refinement
Backlog refinement is a concept used in software delivery planning to describe a condition, relationship, estimate, or decision about engineering work.
Flow and capacity planningBatch size
Batch size is the amount of work grouped into one processing, review, release, or handoff unit. The unit may be a change, pull request, story, deployment, or set of requests.
Flow and capacity planningBatch wait
Batch wait is the elapsed delay caused by holding work until a batch threshold, calendar window, or group of related items is ready. It is a queue effect created by batching policy.
Flow and capacity planningBlocked time
Blocked time is the elapsed duration during which a work item is unable to make its next meaningful transition because an explicit obstacle prevents progress. It is a part of waiting time, not active implementation time.
Flow and capacity planningBlocked work
Blocked work is a concept used in software delivery planning to describe a condition, relationship, estimate, or decision about engineering work.
Flow and capacity planningBlocker
Blocker is a concept used in software delivery planning to describe a condition, relationship, estimate, or decision about engineering work.
Flow and capacity planningBlocker aging
Blocker aging is a concept used in software delivery planning to describe a condition, relationship, estimate, or decision about engineering work.
Flow and capacity planningBlocking reason
A blocking reason is the classified cause attached to work that cannot proceed. Common classes include dependency, decision, environment, capacity, defect, and approval, but the useful taxonomy depends on the workflow.
Flow and capacity planningBottleneck
A bottleneck is a workflow stage or capability whose effective capacity limits the rate at which the whole system can complete work. It is identified through sustained evidence of constrained flow, not simply because a stage feels busy.
Flow and capacity planning