the time between the initiation and the completion of a production process.
— DevOps for the Modern Enterprise, Mirco Hering
Lead Time
3 of our books define this term — and their definitions are worth reading side by side.
A measure of the elapsed time it takes to work on a request from when it was first requested to when it was delivered to the customer.
— Making Work Visible, Second Edition, Dominica Degrandis
The comprehensive duration required for a work item to traverse the value stream from start to finish. This metric encapsulates all stages, including production, pauses, and corrections, summarized simply as “hypothesis-to-happiness,” signifying the journey from initiation to customer satisfaction.
— Flow Engineering, Steve Pereira and Andrew Davis (as “Lead Time (or Flow Time)”)
See also Deployment Lead Time · value stream · Work Item · DORA metrics · Flow Efficiency · average daily rate (ADR)
Filed under Metrics & Economics · Flow & Lean