Lead Time is one of the most important metrics for measuring the efficiency of a software development process. Despite its popularity, many companies still don’t fully leverage this metric to identify bottlenecks, improve predictability, and boost team productivity.
In this article, I’ll break down what Lead Time is and what insights it can give you.
What Is Lead Time and Why It Matters
Lead Time is the total time from the start of a request to its final delivery. This includes all stages of the development flow, from the initial analysis to deployment in production.
This metric helps you understand how efficient your team and process really are. It also helps answer key questions like:
- Is our workflow efficient?
- How long will it take us to deliver something in the future?
- Where are the delays happening?
How to Analyze Lead Time
Lead Time becomes even more valuable when you break it down from different perspectives. This segmentation helps spot patterns and specific issues that might go unnoticed when looking at the overall picture.
Lead Time in WIP (Work in Progress)
This measures how long a task takes to complete after the team starts working on it. It reveals the real speed of active work, highlighting possible delays caused by interruptions, dependencies, or task overload.
Lead Time by Type of Work
Different types of work—like developing new features, implementing improvements, or fixing bugs—can have significantly different Lead Times. For example, bug fixes often take longer than expected due to investigation or rework. Analyzing this can highlight areas that need more attention or process refinement.
Lead Time by Stage
Breaking down Lead Time by each stage of the workflow (like “planning,” “development,” “review,” or “deployment”) helps pinpoint where time is being wasted. This makes it easier to identify steps that need adjustments, such as long review cycles or extended waiting queues.
What You Can Learn About Your Team
When you analyze Lead Time carefully, it gives you valuable insights. Here are some things you can discover:
- How long each task takes: Knowing the average helps with better planning and avoids making unrealistic deadline promises.
- Where the process gets stuck: If time increases in a specific stage, you can pinpoint the issue—maybe it’s a bottleneck or unclear requirements.
- Outliers: Tasks that are much faster or slower than the norm reveal what’s working well and what needs tweaking.
- Consistency: Check if your team delivers at a predictable pace. If Lead Time varies a lot, it might be a sign to refine the workflow.
- The impact of surprises: Tasks with unclear requirements or unexpected changes tend to take longer. This helps you plan ahead to handle such challenges.
- Hidden costs: The longer something takes, the more it costs—in hours, resources, or lost opportunities. Lead Time keeps you aware of this.
How to Calculate Lead Time
Now, let’s get practical: how do you calculate Lead Time? It’s not complicated, but it does require some organization. Here’s a step-by-step guide:
Choose the starting point: Decide when Lead Time begins—this could be when a ticket is created in the system or when it’s accepted in the backlog. The key is to be consistent.
Define the endpoint: Mark when the delivery is completed—either when it reaches the customer or goes live in production. Align this with your team so everyone is on the same page.
Record the timestamps: Log the start and end dates, and if possible, the times. For example:
- Start: February 10, 2025, at 9:00 AM
- End: February 15, 2025, at 4:00 PM
Do the math: Subtract the start time from the end time. In this case:
- 5 days and 7 hours, or 127 hours if you prefer everything in hours. That’s it.
Repeat and compare: Calculate this for multiple tasks over time. If you have five tasks with Lead Times of 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7 days, your average is 5 days—a solid reference point.
Practical Strategies to Reduce Lead Time
If you calculated your Lead Time and found it’s higher than you’d like, don’t worry—you can cut it down with a few targeted actions.
Eliminate Bottlenecks
First, identify where tasks are piling up. Maybe testing is the issue—if Lead Time spikes there, that’s a clue. Suppose your team takes 3 days to test each feature due to a lack of available environments. A solution would be to increase resources, such as adding more test machines or prioritizing test environment availability. That way, you reduce waiting time and speed up the flow.
Use Agile Methodologies
Frameworks like Scrum and Kanban help keep work moving. Kanban, for instance, lets you limit the number of tasks in progress (WIP). If your team has 10 open tasks and the average Lead Time is 8 days, try reducing WIP to 5 tasks and see if the time improves—it forces focus and avoids distractions. In Scrum, short sprints and regular reviews help deliver faster.
Automate Processes
Automating code reviews can cut hours or even days from your Lead Time. Imagine your team spends 2 days manually reviewing each pull request, checking for errors and coding standards. With a tool like Kody by Kodus, this process becomes automatic: it scans the code as soon as the pull request is opened, checks for quality, security, and best practices, and gives feedback in minutes. You set the rules, and Kody does the heavy lifting, reducing review time and letting your team focus on what really matters.
Improve Communication
Misalignment leads to rework, which increases Lead Time. If approvals take days because requirements aren’t clear, try short daily meetings (like stand-ups) to clarify things upfront. For example, if a task sat idle for 4 days waiting for feedback, but after setting better expectations with the client, that delay disappeared.
Strengthen Team Skills
Well-trained developers make faster decisions and make fewer mistakes. If your team struggles with bug fixes due to lack of experience, offer specialized training—like an advanced debugging course. A developer who used to take 3 days to fix an issue might reduce that to 1 day, directly lowering Lead Time.
Making Lead Time Work for You
Calculating Lead Time is just the beginning—the real value is in using it. With these strategies, you can tackle the problems you spot in the numbers. If WIP is too high, limit tasks. If bugs slow things down, invest in prevention or automation. If a stage is stuck, improve communication or resources. These are practical steps driven by what you measure.
