Lead Time vs Cycle Time

Developers should understand and track Lead Time to identify bottlenecks, improve workflow efficiency, and accelerate value delivery to customers meets developers should learn and use cycle time to optimize their team's productivity and reduce delays in delivering features or fixes. Here's our take.

Lead Time

Nice Pick

Developers should understand and track Lead Time to identify bottlenecks, improve workflow efficiency, and accelerate value delivery to customers

Pros

• It is particularly crucial in continuous delivery environments, where reducing Lead Time enables faster feedback loops and more responsive software updates
• Related to: devops, agile-methodologies

Cons

• Specific tradeoffs depend on your use case

Cycle Time

Developers should learn and use Cycle Time to optimize their team's productivity and reduce delays in delivering features or fixes

Pros

• It is particularly valuable in Agile and DevOps environments where rapid iteration is critical, as it helps pinpoint inefficiencies in coding, testing, or deployment stages
• Related to: lead-time, devops-metrics

Cons

• Specific tradeoffs depend on your use case

The Verdict

These tools serve different purposes. Lead Time is a concept while Cycle Time is a methodology. We picked Lead Time based on overall popularity, but your choice depends on what you're building.

The Bottom Line

Lead Time wins

Based on overall popularity. Lead Time is more widely used, but Cycle Time excels in its own space.