This standard ensures teams minimise lead time-from the start of work to safe production deployment-by targeting Lead Time for Change (LTFC), a key DORA metric. Shorter lead time lowers risk, accelerates learning, and increases delivery flow efficiency.
Aligned to our "Fast Feedback Loops" and "Limit Work in Progress (WIP)" policies, this standard reveals and resolves bottlenecks that slow value creation. Without it, teams endure lengthy development cycles, delayed feedback, and hidden coordination costs.
Level 1 – Initial: Lead time is unmeasured and unpredictable. Teams cannot assess how long it takes to deliver value or where delays occur.
Level 2 – Managed: Teams manually track lead time for some work, but practices vary. Observations may include broad stages like development and deployment, without detailed instrumentation.
Level 3 – Defined: Lead time is consistently measured using automated tooling across source control, CI/CD, and work tracking systems. Work is scoped to enable fast, testable delivery.
Level 4 – Quantitatively Managed: Lead time metrics are analysed across phases. Delays are traced to specific causes, such as review queues, coordination gaps, or flaky tests, and actively addressed.
Level 5 – Optimising: Lead time metrics inform platform and process optimisation. Teams run flow acceleration experiments and share improvements across the organisation to raise overall maturity.