* 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.

* Dramatic performance degradation results when operating in the elbow of the curve, which means even seemingly small workload changes can bring about dramatic performance changes. This can be very frustrating to users who crave consistency and dependability.

Figure 9-11. Shown is a highly abstracted response-time graph with minimal information. It is used to convey the performance situation as unacceptable and clearly in the elbow of the curve. People seem to intuitively know that being in the elbow of the curve is a bad thing.