Lead Time vs Cycle Time in Kanban and measuring Cycle Time
Tests whether you distinguish customer wait time from active work. Strong answer: Lead Time is request-to-delivery with queues; Cycle Time is active start-to-finish measured from In Progress to Done. Red flag: treating them as synonyms or ignoring wait states.
This tests whether you understand flow metrics and can separate customer-perceived latency from process efficiency. A strong answer defines Lead Time as the total clock time from request to delivery including all queues and wait states, while Cycle Time covers only the active period from when work starts to when it is finished. To measure Cycle Time for one item, you timestamp its entry into an In Progress column and subtract that from the Done timestamp. A red flag is conflating the two terms or excluding blocked time from Cycle Time.
Read the original → community.atlassian.com
- #kanban
- #agile
- #metrics
- #lead-time
- #cycle-time
Get five bites like this every day.
Tezvyn delivers a daily feed of 60-second tech bites with quizzes to lock in what you learn.