Lead Time
ELI5 — The Vibe Check
Lead time is how long it takes from code commit to running in production. Elite teams do it in under an hour. Low performers take over six months. It measures how much bureaucracy, manual testing, and deployment pain stands between your code and your users.
Real Talk
A DORA metric measuring the elapsed time from code commit to code successfully running in production. Lead time encompasses code review, CI/CD pipeline execution, deployment, and any manual approval steps. Elite performers have lead times of less than one hour; low performers have lead times exceeding six months.
When You'll Hear This
"Our lead time is 3 days — most of that is waiting for manual QA approval." / "Reducing lead time from weeks to hours was the biggest impact we made this quarter."
Related Terms
Deployment Frequency
Deployment Frequency is how often you ship to production. Elite teams: multiple times per day.
DORA Metrics
DORA Metrics are four numbers that measure how well your team delivers software: how often you deploy, how fast code goes from commit to production, how of...