Little’s Law

Have you noticed that the more projects a team starts, the less it seems to finish?

Everyone is busy. Calendars are full. Updates are happening constantly.

But actual completion becomes strangely rare.

Little’s Law helps explain why:

The more work sitting in a system, the longer it usually takes to move through it.

Every unfinished task competes for attention. People switch between priorities, wait on dependencies, attend more update meetings, and repeatedly figure out where they left off.

The problem may not be that the team needs to work faster.

The problem may be that too much work has been allowed into the system at once.

Sometimes progress begins when we stop starting things.