Base120 · Decomposition
Constraint Isolation
Identify specific limiting factor preventing performance improvement
When to use
"Use when performance improvement efforts yield diminishing returns. Identify the specific constraint that is currently limiting performance. Improvement anywhere except the constraint is illusory."
Example
"A deployment pipeline takes 45 minutes. Profiling — build (5 min), test (30 min), deploy (10 min). The constraint is testing. Speeding up the build or deploy does not reduce total time; only speeding up testing matters."
Common misuse
"Improving non-constraints and claiming progress. If the constraint is testing and you speed up the build by 3 minutes, total time drops from 45 to 42 — a 7% improvement that feels like progress but does not address the real bottleneck."