Lead time
Lead time is the elapsed time from when work is requested (story created, ticket filed) to when it's delivered (deployed to production). It's a DORA metric measuring end-to-end delivery flow — including queueing time, not just active development.
Lead time is more revealing than cycle time (start-of-work to delivery) because it captures backlog dwell — the waste that doesn't show up in burndowns. Elite-performing teams hit lead times under a day; medium-performance teams measure in weeks. The shortest path to better lead time is usually shrinking story scope (split stories) and reducing handoffs (one team end-to-end). Process mining is the diagnostic tool for finding where lead time is being spent.
Long-form posts that explore lead time in depth — when to use it, common failure modes, how AI helps.
- BPMN process mining without Celonis moneyCelonis charges $100K-$1M+ for process mining. It's genuinely good. It's also wildly overpriced for 95% of teams. This is the lighter-weight playbook that actually works.9 min read
- What's the actual ROI of AI in software delivery?$4-$8 back for every dollar spent within 6 months, for most teams. The honest math from real data, not the deck.7 min read
Related terms
- Throughput
Throughput is the count of work items completed per unit of time (typically per week or per sprint).
- BPMN
Business Process Model and Notation is the ISO 19510 standard for graphically representing business processes as flowcharts.
- MTTR
Mean Time To Recovery is the average elapsed time between an incident's detection and its resolution.