Lead Time

WHY IT MATTERS

Lead time indicates how quickly changes move from development to production. Shorter lead times mean faster value delivery.

HOW IT'S MEASURED

Lead time is calculated as the time elapsed from when a pull request is started (first commit is made on a branch) to when it is complete (merged to a development branch). 

Lead time = time of merge - time of first commit

If you set up deployment tracking for your organization, you can also measure the deploy stage (time elapsed between merging and deploying a pull request). Industry benchmarks exclude the deploy stage because of the differences in workflows across teams.