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What is Lead Time Breakdown

Lead Time Breakdown gives you a detailed view of your development process by breaking down the total cycle time into three key phases: coding time, pickup time, and review time. This helps you identify exactly where bottlenecks occur in your workflow.

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How We Calculate It

We automatically track the time spent in each phase of your development process, from first commit to PR merge. What We Track:
  • Coding Time: Active development time (first commit to last commit)
  • Pickup Time: Time between last commit and creating the PR
  • Review Time: Time from PR creation to merge
What We Don’t Count:
  • Time before first commit (planning, design)
  • Time after merge (deployment, etc.)
  • Failed or abandoned PRs
How It’s Calculated: 
Coding Time = (Last Commit Time) - (First Commit Time)
Pickup Time = (PR Opened Time) - (Last Commit Time)  
Review Time = (PR Closed Time) - (PR Opened Time)
We use the 75th percentile (P75) for each phase to filter out outliers and show you typical performance.

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Why It Matters

Understanding where time is spent helps you optimize the right part of your process:
  • Coding Time: Shows development efficiency
  • Pickup Time: Reveals workflow bottlenecks
  • Review Time: Indicates review process effectiveness

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How to Improve

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Reduce Coding Time

  • Clear Requirements: Ensure developers understand what to build
  • Smaller Features: Break large changes into manageable pieces
  • Pair Programming: Collaborate to solve complex problems faster
  • Code Reuse: Leverage existing patterns and components

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Reduce Pickup Time

  • Immediate PR Creation: Create PRs right after finishing code
  • Workflow Automation: Use tools to streamline PR creation
  • Clear Definition of Done: Know exactly when code is ready
  • Reduce Context Switching: Focus on completing one task at a time

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Reduce Review Time

  • Review Guidelines: Set clear expectations for reviewers
  • Automated Checks: Use tools to catch issues before review
  • Review Rotation: Distribute review workload across the team
  • Quick Responses: Respond promptly to review comments

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Common Bottlenecks

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Coding Time

  • Unclear Requirements: Developers don’t know what to build
  • Complex Features: Changes that are too large or complex
  • Technical Debt: Working around existing code issues
  • Dependencies: Waiting for other components or services

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Pickup Time

  • Workflow Inefficiency: Manual steps that slow down the process
  • Context Switching: Moving between multiple tasks
  • Lack of Automation: Manual PR creation and setup

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Review Time

  • Large PRs: Changes that are too big to review quickly
  • Reviewer Availability: Not enough people available to review
  • Unclear Changes: PRs that are hard to understand
  • Review Backlog: Too many PRs waiting for review