Manage Your Project Portfolio, 2nd Edition

Measure Project Cycle and Lead Time

Your project teams might not work in iterations. If not, they can measure cycle time and lead time.

Cycle time is the time it takes for the project team to work on the item. You measure cycle time from the time the item comes off the Ready column until it’s done. That does not account for all the time the team considers an item.

Lead time is the entire duration a team considers a task: from the time the item goes on the board until the team delivers the item to the customer—for an item to move from the Ready column to the Done column, as shown in the figure.

If you have large variation in item size, you’ll ...