It's impossible to have small batches and thus Continuous Delivery if there's a part of the (tech) value stream that has high transaction cost.
At this place in the system batch size starts to build up and clogs downstream part.

Like an elephant moving through a boa constrictor.
Conversely, looking for the place in the system where there's the highest transaction cost, is a great leverage point in order to increase the throughput of the whole system.

Yup, you got it, #tocot way of continuous improvement.
Also, for a long time, I was thinking that minimizing transaction cost is THE thing that enables batch size reduction.

But just recently had the epiphany that it's necessary, but not sufficient.
What compliments it and creates both necessary and sufficient conditions is increasing the cost of (keeping) the inventory.
I think of this analogy as a ball that's on a flat surface and has an obstacle in front of it.
Obstacle is the high transaction cost and flat surface is the low cost of keeping the inventory.

Minimizing the transaction cost is removing the obstacle.
This is necessary, but not sufficient condition for the ball to start rolling.
We need to address the inertia by tilting the ground which equals to increasing the cost of keeping inventory and then the ball starts rolling downhill (a small batch moving fast through the system).
TCR from @KentBeck is a great example of applying 'increase cost of (keeping) the inventory' idea in order to incentivize batch size reduction.
Another example: 'deleting a branch if it becomes older than a day'. A bit extreme yeah, but this serves as an enabling constraint.

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More from @d_stepanovic

19 Jun 19
Organizations with a lack of psychological safety are incentivized for big batches (a.k.a. waterfall).

Let me unwrap that.

Any incremental effort is exposing temporal lack of consistency because it optimizes for the improvement through learning not the upfront perfection.

1/7
If you want to go incremental, you have to accept that you'll be imperfect and not consistent, at least temporarily. In order to be able to be imperfect you have to expose yourself through your work for feedback to colleagues, bosses, users etc.
2/7
This requires enough trust in the environment that you can feel free to be vulnerable. In case you don't feel you're allowed and accepted to be vulnerable, you won't allow yourself to be imperfect because that would expose you (through critics and feedback).
3/7
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