2 ms·
In the long-run, queueing systems tend to follow Little's law given by L = λW where L is the long-term average number of customers waiting (in a stationary
by vivegi 4y ago
In the long-run, queueing systems tend to follow Little's law given by
L = λW
where L is the long-term average number of customers waiting (in a stationary system), λ is the long-term average arrival rate of customers and W is the average time to serve a customer.
In software development, you can reduce W through best practices, standards, better specs, improved testing, increasing team size etc., You can control λ by triaging tickets.
This works as long as the customers (in the s/w case tickets or PRs) are all independent.
A lot of the complexity in s/w development results from interdependencies between tickets. This causes the service times to vary and pushes the long-term W higher and not to mention affecting the stationary assumption of the system.
- kristianov 4y agoUnderlying assumption: μ>λ
- CMCDragonkai 4y agoDoesn't lambda get controlled via sales and marketing?
- vivegi 4y agoYes, it could. In product teams, this could be feature requests whatever the source of that is. Ultimately, there is someone who is responsible for flagging that the arrival rate of tickets/PRs is higher than what the system can handle without compromising on service time W (and indirectly customer experience L). So, it could be a product manager too. No different than a triage nurse (the field from where the term originated). Deciding what practical action to take such as increasing the overall system capacity, managing the customer's expectation, doing nothing and taking a hit on service time etc., is then a business call.