Lead Time: From Customer Request to Live Code
Lead Time measures the total duration from when a feature is requested to when it's live for users—it's the customer's total waiting time. Teams use it to understand responsiveness and set predictable timelines. The footgun is confusing it with Cycle Time.
THE MENTAL MODEL: Think of Lead Time as the total "order to delivery" time for a software feature. It measures the entire duration from the moment a request is made (the "order") to the moment it is live and providing value to a user (the "delivery"). It is a customer-centric metric because it reflects their total waiting period.
HOW IT WORKS: The Lead Time clock starts as soon as a work item is created or formally requested, for example, when a ticket is added to a product backlog. The clock stops only when the completed feature is deployed to the production environment and available to end-users. This full duration includes all phases: time spent waiting in the backlog, refinement, prioritization, active development, testing, code review, and deployment.
WHEN TO USE IT: Use Lead Time to measure the overall health and predictability of your entire value stream. It's invaluable for answering the business question, "How long will it take from when we have an idea until our customers can use it?". It helps in setting realistic expectations with stakeholders and can highlight bottlenecks anywhere in the process, especially "wait states" like long backlog queues.
WHEN NOT TO USE IT: Do not use Lead Time as a performance metric to compare teams, as different teams have different contexts, dependencies, and types of work. Also, focusing solely on reducing Lead Time without considering quality can lead to cutting corners. It is a diagnostic tool, not a target to be gamed. For measuring the efficiency of the development part of the process specifically, Cycle Time (from "work started" to "work done") is a more focused metric.
ONE CANONICAL EXAMPLE: A product manager creates a Jira ticket for a new "Export to CSV" button on January 1st. The ticket sits in the backlog. The development team starts working on it on February 15th. They finish coding and testing, and the feature is deployed to production on February 25th. The Cycle Time is 10 days (Feb 15 to Feb 25). The Lead Time is 55 days (Jan 1 to Feb 25). The 45-day difference reveals the cost of waiting in the backlog.
Read the original → agilealliance.org
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