I would recommend a guided series of lectures to get started with and then pick up a book or lectures pdf's once you are comfortable with the basics to expand.
In my opinion, there is a bit of a cliff of learning, where the beginning starts out harder, then begin the application of the theory. Others have mentioned, Little's Law, Erlang model, Kendall's notation etc..
Starting to learn, I would look at the following (since subject matter experts can explain the concepts and analogies much better):
* MAP6264 Queueing Theory, Prof. Robert B. Cooper.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AsTuNP0N7DU
* MIT OCW, 15.072J | Spring 2006 | Graduate
* Queues: Theory And Applications.
https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/15-072j-queues-theory-and-applications-spring-2006/
For books, performance engineering/benchmarking topics usually contain a refresher on the basics and application of queuing theory which I think makes it easy to see its use.
To answer your question regarding one book to start with:
* An Introduction to Queueing Systems by Sanjay K.Bose
* Slides for Lectures Based on the Book
http://home.iitk.ac.in/~skb/ee679/ee679.html
* Sample tests and solutions
http://home.iitk.ac.in/~skb/qbook/sample_tests.html
I learnt it as part of discrete event simulation and modelling, though I can't find the book I learnt off, someone may have a suggestion. It was a very interesting course, covered queuing theory, random number generators and tests, probability, Markov processes and more. It was one of those, I need 10 points and its on Wednesday afternoon so I can have Friday off courses, and one of the most useful courses I studied.
It’s not exactly what you’ve asked for, but “Principles of Product Development Flow” by Don Reinertsen is a seminal work that covers a lot of queuing theory in the context of software development and project management.
In my opinion, there is a bit of a cliff of learning, where the beginning starts out harder, then begin the application of the theory. Others have mentioned, Little's Law, Erlang model, Kendall's notation etc..
Starting to learn, I would look at the following (since subject matter experts can explain the concepts and analogies much better):
For books, performance engineering/benchmarking topics usually contain a refresher on the basics and application of queuing theory which I think makes it easy to see its use.To answer your question regarding one book to start with: