Why You Should Use Lead Time Instead of Cycle Time

Too Long; Didn't Read

Our concepts of Lead Time and Cycle Time came from the field of Operations Management and Production Engineering. As such, I think it’s beneficial to all of us to maintain coherent with them and use the same semantics in Software Engineering Management as well. Using Throughput or other measurements of deliveries over time, I very much prefer using Throughput to give everyone a better understanding of lead time. I think you should not use cycle time when referring to single items and how many days that item is in the process flow.