Working practice
Lead time
How long a piece of work takes from request to live.
Definition
The elapsed time between work being asked for and it being in production, including all the waiting: queueing, review, approvals and release. It differs from cycle time, which measures only the period someone was actively working on it.
Why it matters
Most of a long lead time is waiting, not working, so adding people speeds up the wrong part and often makes it worse. Measure the gap between lead time and cycle time before you buy more capacity. If the gap is large, your problem is your approval queue, not your team size.
Related
Read next
Velocity
How much work a team completes per iteration, used for forecasting.
Read the definition ›Capacity planning
Matching the work you expect to the people who can do it.
Read the definition ›Time-zone tax
The hidden cost of every question taking a day to answer.
Read the definition ›Sprint
A fixed period of work ending in something you can look at.
Read the definition ›Next step
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