Comparison
Cycle timevsLead time
Cycle time
the work took four days once someone started it, and it had been sitting in the backlog since March.
The time from work starting to work finishing, excluding everything before someone picked it up. It is what teams can influence directly, which makes it the useful improvement target, and it is what teams quote when they want to look fast. Reporting cycle time to stakeholders who are experiencing lead time is one of the most common sources of mutual frustration between engineering and everyone else.
Full entry →Lead time
the request was made in March and reached customers in June, and the coding took four days.
The time from a request being made to it being delivered — the clock the customer actually experiences. It includes all the waiting: prioritisation, queueing, review, release windows. It is the more honest of the two flow measures because it counts the parts the team does not control, and it is usually dominated by them.
Full entry →