Home › Agile glossary › Lead time
Lead time
Lead time measures the whole wait a requester experiences: from the moment a request is made to the moment it is delivered.
Lead time equals cycle time plus queue time, and in most teams the queue is the larger half. A request that waits three weeks in the backlog and takes two days to build has a lead time of twenty-three days, whatever the execution metrics say.
It falls by having fewer things in the queue — saying no earlier and deleting stale backlog items — far more than by working faster.
In Flocci Projects
Derivable from an issue's created timestamp and its activity history, but there is no built-in lead-time report.
Related terms
See it on a free boardBrowse the whole glossary
- Agile
- Backlog refinement
- Blocker
- Burndown chart
- Burnup chart
- Cycle time
- Daily standup
- Definition of done
- Definition of ready
- Epic
- Kanban
- Planning poker
- Product backlog
- Product owner
- Retrospective
- Scrum
- Scrum master
- Sprint
- Sprint goal
- Sprint planning
- Sprint review
- Story point
- Swimlane
- Throughput
- User story
- Velocity
- WIP limit