Minimum branch length

When I built my harness based on the club level course, one of the many mistakes I made were some branches that were too short, which just led to the connectors being too close to each other and not enough flexibility. I'm not planning a new harness to practice what I've been learning with professional course and I was wondering if you have a rule of thumb for minimum length between a branch and a connector?

Experience has taught me to make the split farther away from the connector and use a minimum of 6-8" for most connector leads. There are exceptions for injectors and coils where the location and spacing are very well defined (might use as little as 3" from face of connector).