User:TCipriani (WMF)/Lead time

Varying definitions of lead time
Lead time is the time it takes to go from a customer making a request to the request being satisfied. [...] The delivery part of lead time is easier to measure. [...] We measured product delivery lead time as the time it takes to go from code committed to code running in proudction.

– Accelerate (pg. 14, 15)

For the software delivery process, the most important global metric is cycle time. This is the time between deciding that a feature needs to be implemented and having that feature released to users. [...] Focusing on the reduction of cycle time encourages the practices that increase quality.

– Continuous Delivery (pg 138)

While cycle time is the most important metric in software delivery, there are a number of other diagnostics that can warn you of problems. These include


 * Automated test coverage
 * Properties of the codebase such as the amount of duplication, cyclomatic complexity, efferent and afferent coupling, style problems, and so on
 * Number of defects
 * Velocity, the rate at which your team delivers working, tested, ready for use code
 * Number of commits to the version control system per day
 * Number of builds per day
 * Number of build failures per day
 * Duration of build, including automated tests

– Continuous Delivery (pg 139)