Determine how many Jenkins executors you need to meet target build throughput.
Little's Law applied to a build farm: the number of executors needed to sustain a given arrival rate equals that rate multiplied by how long each build occupies an executor. Rounding up with `ceil` ensures enough capacity to avoid a queue from forming under steady-state load — though this doesn't account for burstiness, so real deployments typically add extra headroom above this baseline.
executors = ceil(buildsPerHour × avgDurationHours)
Rounding down would leave slightly less capacity than the target throughput requires, causing queue buildup over time even under perfectly steady load; rounding up guarantees the theoretical capacity meets or exceeds demand.
No — this is a steady-state average calculation; real build traffic is bursty (e.g. everyone pushes right before standup), so production capacity planning typically adds 20–50% headroom above this baseline to absorb bursts without long queue waits.
This calculator answers 'how many executors do I need for zero steady-state queueing,' while the build queue calculator answers 'given my current executor count, how long will builds wait' — they're inverse views of the same queueing relationship.