bottle necking

Bottlenecking describes a situation where flow or progress is restricted at a single point, creating a backup.

The term comes from how liquid slows when passing through a bottle's narrow neck.

In computing, a slow component bottlenecks the entire system: The old hard drive was bottlenecking performance.

In traffic, manufacturing, or any process, bottlenecking identifies where congestion occurs.

Also spelled as two words or hyphenated.