A team with 20 open PRs is mathematically slower than a team with 3. Not “feels slower.” Not “probably slower.” Is slower. If your tickets take two weeks to cross the board while coding takes a few hours, the problem isn’t effort — it’s how much work your team keeps in flight at the same time. And there’s a 65-year-old law that explains exactly why. The equation Little’s Law, proven by MIT professor John Little in 1961, applies to any stable flow system over a long enough interval. Lead Time = WIP / Throughput In plain English: Lead Time — how long it takes for a ticket to go from started → merged → deployed WIP — Work In Progress, the number of items currently in flight Throughput — how many items your team completes per unit time (usually per week) This is not a metaphor. It governs factories, airport security lines, and fast-food drive-throughs. It also governs your Git workflow — whether you acknowledge it or not. The example that breaks the illusion Let’s run the numbers on a real team.…