Ah yes, lead time.
A widely used agile metric, but often misunderstood in how it differs from cycle time. While cycle time focuses on how long a task takes once work has started, lead time measures the entire journey. Starting from the moment a request is made until the given work is completed. This makes lead time a more comprehensive metric than cycle time, when trying to understand overall agility and delivery speed.
Let’s dive into lead time and explore how it impacts teams and workflows.
What is lead time?
I will provide a simple definition later, but first, let’s go to the same known scenario that we always use; packing boxes before relocating to a new home. A scenario that most of us can relate to.
You have to get some boxes, start packing all your belongings into boxes, and then place them conveniently at a place to be picked up by a moving company. You initiate the work on Wednesday, where you get some boxes that you can use for packing:
- Day 1 (Wednesday): You buy boxes for packing your belongings.
- Day 2 (Thursday): You're a bit lazy today, no boxes are being packed.
- Day 3 (Friday): It's Friday, no time to pack boxes!
- Day 4 (Saturday): You pack boxes.
- Day 5 (Sunday): You pack the last boxes, and they are now ready for being picked up.
- Day 6 (Monday): It's Monday, and your boxes are all over the place.
- Day 7 (Tuesday): You place your boxes together in one room, and stack them on top of each other.
Your cycle time for packing the boxes was 2 days (Saturday and Sunday), but your lead time of packing boxes before moving was 7 days, starting from when you bought boxes to be used till they were placed together ready for being picked up.
Lead time therefore includes everything. The waiting time. The processing time. The work time. Everything that leads up to the final outcome for you to have boxes ready before relocating into a new home, which is why it is conveniently called lead time.
If we visualize lead time on a chart, we would see a timeline showing the full journey between initiation to completion. Again, the timeline would include everything towards completion, just like we included the steps of purchasing boxes, packing the boxes and the bits in between.
The longer the gap between initiation and completion, the longer the lead time. Optimizing this metric would help teams improve agility, reduce delays, and deliver value faster. On the other hand, if the lead time is too long, then this could indicate delays, slow processes, unnecessary wait times or other inefficiencies.
Now, back to the simple definition of lead time.
Simple definition of lead time
Lead time is the total time from when a task is initiated to when it is completed, providing insights on overall agility and efficiency.
