Lead Time – a Key Metric in DevOps

Lead time is the time it takes for a company to implement, test, and deliver code. Measuring lead time enables companies to streamline and optimize deployment pipelines, reducing lead times to improve business outcomes. The aim is to increase speed of deployment through automation, such as optimizing integration of testing process. Development environments ensure software is rigorously tested across shared, test, and feature environments. Lead time is a clear metric to measure team deployments' efficiency, representing how responsive the company is to customer needs. Companies with shorter lead times, like CapitalOne, deploy code 208 times more frequently than low performers. To reduce lead time, companies can automate deployment pipelines through Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery, releasing features regularly rather than waiting for big releases. However, lead time measurement should be considered in context of team size, skill, workload, and priorities, as it's not a precise science to measure individual team member work, but rather to identify bottlenecks and optimize business outcomes.

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