Figure 9-11 is an example of a very high-level response-time graph. With a graph like this, you can help your audience understand three fundamental facts:

* Explain that the response time graph is a very abstracted perspective of what users are experiencing. Make sure they understand as the workload increases, so does poor performance. And the objective is to get the system out of the elbow of the curve. Most people inherently understand (even though they may not be able to articulate it) being in the elbow of the curve is bad and being to the left of the elbow is good. It then follows that your solutions will somehow move the system out of the elbow of the curve.

* The workload is so intense it is pushing performance degradation very high. Highlight the vertical bar in the elbow of the curve (I even included an arrow in Figure 9-11), so there is no doubt your audience understands the workload is much too large. Everyone will naturally know that one solution is to reduce the workload.