Understanding Software Delivery Lead Time & Why It Matters

Lead time is a crucial measure for many organizations. Keep reading to learn everything you need to know about delivery lead time and how you can adapt processes to decrease it.

What Is Delivery Lead Time for Software?

In general, lead time is how long it takes for a product to be delivered after it’s initially requested. In software development and deployment, lead time to delivery is how long it takes to implement and launch software updates. It begins when developers or users identify a product change and continues to the point when a solution goes live for users. This process will include all smaller tasks and procedures your software engineers and developers undertake to complete the big-picture final product.

Lead Time vs. Cycle Time

While lead time in software development considers the time when an initial request comes in to when the solution goes live, cycle time measures the time team members actively work on projects and tasks. Cycle times help organizations break down and understand the factors contributing to overall delivery lead time. Cycle time for a department will start when a request moves from a queue, includes in-progress processes and finishes when the project moves to the next stage or department. Cycle time is about stages of work.

Knowing the difference between lead and cycle time can help your company better measure lead delivery time and understand inefficient processes. Lead time will include however long your project spends waiting in queues for approval or for teams to complete other tasks. Lead time ends once a fielded or deployed project is available to users. The process is a larger-scale representation of the project development and will outline how it moves throughout your company.

Developers can also understand the difference between cycle and lead time by their varying perspectives. Many organizations consider the lead time from the user’s perspective. They will identify a problem with the software, and lead time signifies how long they must wait to see it fixed. Cycle time is from your developers’ viewpoint because it measures how much time it takes to tackle an issue and arrive at a solution.

Common Causes of Long Lead Times

Many organizations struggle with longer lead times in software development. When you want to improve your lead and cycle times, understanding the standard causes of long lead times can help you identify focal points.

• Poor backlog management: Lead times start with identifying and documenting a problem or improvement. Because companies often have several projects going at a time, a lack of prioritization or movement can cause issues to get lost in the backlog. They might wait longer for teams to start working on them, causing your overall lead time to increase.
• Manual processes: Longer cycle times can attribute to teams relying on manual efforts throughout and within processes. Manual processes take more time and are more prone to errors, meaning teams might have to return to tasks or spend more time checking work. Automated testing and quality control can help make cycle times more efficient and improve lead delivery time.
• Handoff procedures and queues: When departments or teams use separate systems for their processes, organizational siloes can decrease process efficiency. A lack of prioritization or long to-do lists can prevent teams from starting tasks when necessary, adding wait times at various stages. Often, risk-averse organizations will build complex processes of approval, with lead time increasing as a result. Wanting to confirm delivery quality is beneficial, but it must be purposeful and efficient.
• Ignoring roadblocks: Development teams may not feel empowered to resolve issues that cause delays in implementing solutions, particularly when the team cannot internally solve them. They may have pressure to start new work while waiting for issues to resolve themselves. Teams must capture data related to the cause of delays. Further, outside analysis helps implement organizational change at the appropriate level, preventing a recurrence of the delay on all projects.

Why Does Lead Time for Software Development Matter?

Measuring lead time is essential to improve your user experience and internal process efficiency. When users encounter a problem, short lead times mean you can launch solutions quicker, meeting their needs and expectations.

Changes in market conditions or customer demands can cause your teams to reevaluate strategies and solutions. When you have a shorter lead time and a better understanding of what goes into your average lead time, you can better adapt to shifts in the market for a more successful product and company.

Lead time can highlight areas of improvement. Because it gives you a big picture of organizational processes, you can better target areas of improvement for increased focus. Frequently measuring your lead and cycle times helps you chart improvement progress, showing where you have made processes more efficient over time.

How Do You Measure Lead Time?

Because each company has unique internal processes and projects have varying requirements, every organization will have a different measurement method depending on their needs and procedures.

When looking for a general way to measure, quantify and track lead time, you can break down the big picture into each component, from the waiting stages to individual cycle times. These visualizations can help your company understand how your projects move and the steps required for completion, and they can also allow you to assign time estimates to stages and determine where you might have redundant or inefficient phases.

Finding a data operations platform and processes that work for your company and teams is essential when measuring lead time. Just as an automated process can reduce errors, automated measurements reduce errors and enable decisions based on consistent and reliable data.

Tips to Boost Lead Time for Software

Improving lead and cycle time takes the right tools and strategies for your company. Here are some ways you can decrease lead time.

• Releasing smaller, more frequent updates: While big projects are exciting, they are complex and time-consuming. They also provide many opportunities to make mistakes. Therefore, more preparation time is necessary before you can launch new features. Instead, consider separating large projects into smaller releases. Your teams can wait less and see their work go live sooner. Customers and users will gain benefits earlier and provide valuable feedback on how closely the product meets their expectations. This strategy also gives your teams more agility and adaptability, allowing you to change processes to match market demand.
• Integrating quality control at every step: Manual quality control and testing can slow down operations, but they are essential, whether you are launching new features or fixing a bug. Ensuring functionality before your software is live can prevent you from returning to overlooked issues later. Automating QC standards and testing procedures can streamline the processes. Implement these features at every stage, so teams can focus on their work while receiving insights on how well the product works.
• Partnering with the right teams: Determining lead time measurement processes and finding valuable tools can be challenging for many companies. When you want to improve your lead time, you can partner with a process improvement organization that understands and specializes in procedures like measuring and tracking lead and cycle time.

Streamline Your Lead Time With Business Transformation Institute

Business Transformation Institute helps companies improve processes with measurable results and actions. When you want to reduce your organization’s lead time, we specialize in process mining to help you understand what is working well and what inefficiencies you can rectify. Nymbul Mineral^©, our process mining report generator and analysis toolkit, allows you and your team to run prebuilt and custom reports by providing individuals with performance and quality measures.

With experience working with several industries, Business Transformation Institute can better apply our knowledge to your unique needs.

Contact us today and discover how we can help you improve your lead time.