--- name: bottleneck-analysis description: "Which single stage is capping your funnel's throughput, and which stage deals stall at worst — from a short list of stages, no full value stream map required. Use when: You already suspect the pipeline has a problem stage and want it named with the arithmetic behind it, not just a gut feeling confirmed. You need to decide where to focus limited attention first — one specific stage, not a general 'speed up the funnel' initiative. Not for: You want the overall flow-efficiency percentage, not a specific stage — that's the funnel flow efficiency calculator. You want waste findings, a Pareto ranking of every stage, or countermeasures — this deliberately only surfaces the two constraint findings, not the fuller picture the sales funnel value stream map builds. Every stage in your pipeline has roughly the same process and wait time — there's no single bottleneck to name, and forcing one would misdirect the fix." --- # Bottleneck analysis Which single stage is capping your funnel's throughput, and which stage deals stall at worst — from a short list of stages, no full value stream map required. Family: Value stream mapping · Format: .xlsx · Domain: commercial ## What it is Every value stream has two distinct constraint questions, and they don't always have the same answer: which stage has the least capacity (the capacity constraint — active work per deal, stretched by any downtime you record, shared across the people working that stage in parallel, and checked against takt if you give demand), and which stage chokes flow worst (the one with the largest wait time — where deals sit stalled longest). A bottleneck analysis answers both directly from your stage data, the same computation the sales funnel value stream map runs as part of its fuller picture, pulled out on its own for when the question is specifically 'which stage do I fix first,' not a full documented map. ## When to use it Use it when: - You already suspect the pipeline has a problem stage and want it named with the arithmetic behind it, not just a gut feeling confirmed. - You need to decide where to focus limited attention first — one specific stage, not a general 'speed up the funnel' initiative. - You have per-stage process and wait time and want the capacity constraint and the largest wait contributor identified without building a full map. Not when: - You want the overall flow-efficiency percentage, not a specific stage — that's the funnel flow efficiency calculator. - You want waste findings, a Pareto ranking of every stage, or countermeasures — this deliberately only surfaces the two constraint findings, not the fuller picture the sales funnel value stream map builds. - Every stage in your pipeline has roughly the same process and wait time — there's no single bottleneck to name, and forcing one would misdirect the fix. ## How to fill it in - **scope** — Just the one-line description at the top. Keep it to one comparable pipeline segment, same discipline as every other value-stream kata — a blended segment produces a bottleneck finding that describes neither. - **steps** — List each stage in order with its process time and the wait time after it. This is the only real intake — paste rows straight from a customer relationship management (CRM) export if you have them. - **demand** — Optional, but it sharpens the answer: with the deals needed per week or month, the tool says whether the constraint stage is actually too slow for demand, not just the slowest. - **map** — Drawn from your stages, with bursts on the capacity constraint and the longest stall so the two answers are visible side by side. - **metrics** — The capacity constraint (the stage with the least capacity once downtime and the people working it in parallel are counted) and the largest wait contributor are identified for you the moment you submit — that's this tool's whole output, with the arithmetic shown. - **wasteFindings** — Not part of this tool's output. The full sales funnel value stream map runs the complete eight-wastes breakdown; this one only names the two constraint stages. - **pareto** — Not part of this tool's output as a ranked list — you get the single largest wait contributor directly, not a ranking of every stage. Use the full sales funnel value stream map if you want every stage ranked. - **futureState** — Optional — once the constraint is named, sketch the funnel with it relieved in the same editor and check whether the next constraint appears. - **countermeasures** — Not part of this tool's output — there's no observation-notes field feeding a countermeasure narrative here. Once the constraint stage is named, the sales funnel value stream map or a deal A3 is where you'd work through what to do about it. ## What good looks like The example below is the same six-stage outbound funnel as the full sales funnel value stream map, because the constraint findings this tool surfaces are exactly the ones that map computes as part of its fuller analysis. What's different is the path: this page only asked for stage names, process time, and wait time. Full worked example, on-screen and as a downloadable .xlsx: https://www.katafacts.com/katas/bottleneck-analysis ## Common mistakes - **Treating the capacity constraint and the largest wait contributor as the same stage without checking.** — They frequently aren't the same stage — one caps how much work can move through per unit time, the other is where already-started work sits stalled longest. Fixing the wrong one for the problem you actually have wastes the attention this tool is meant to focus. - **Naming a bottleneck from a pipeline segment that blends genuinely different deal types.** — Same scope discipline as every other value-stream kata — a blended segment's 'bottleneck' is an artifact of the blend, not a real constraint in either underlying segment. - **Acting on the bottleneck finding without re-running the analysis after the fix.** — Removing one constraint reliably surfaces the next one — a bottleneck analysis is a snapshot, not a one-time diagnosis, the same theory-of-constraints principle that applies on a shop floor. ## What it connects to Downstream: - **Sales funnel value stream map** (`sales-funnel-map`) — Once the constraint stage is named, this is where you'd build the fuller picture — waste findings, a full Pareto ranking, and countermeasures tied to the finding. - **Funnel flow efficiency calculator** (`funnel-pce-calculator`) — If the question shifts from 'which stage' to 'how bad is it overall,' this is the more direct next step. - **Deal A3 — win-rate root cause analysis** (`deal-a3`) — Once a specific constraint stage is named, a deal A3 is where you'd run root cause analysis on why that stage specifically is capping throughput or choking flow. ## Where AI helps Judgement — stays with you: - Deciding whether the capacity constraint or the largest wait contributor is the more urgent one to act on first - Judging whether a named bottleneck is structural or a one-off caused by unrelated circumstances Analysis — AI helps: - Nothing here — identifying the constraint stages is a deterministic calculation, not an analysis judgement call Drudgery — automated: - Identifying the capacity constraint and the largest wait contributor from stage data, with the arithmetic shown - Exporting to xlsx in the house format --- Bottleneck analysis is licensed [CC BY 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Attribution: Katafacts (katafacts.com). ## Using this skill Apply this method as part of whatever broader task, instructions, or deliverable you're already working on -- it's a method to use, not a standalone conversation to start. There is no generation tool for this catalogue yet, so draft the artifact's actual content yourself, following the fields above, the same way a person filling this out by hand would. The canonical guide page and a downloadable worked example (.xlsx) are at https://www.katafacts.com/katas/bottleneck-analysis.