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title: “DORA - Lead Time for Changes(WIP)” description: > DORA - Lead Time for Changes sidebar_position: 19

What is this metric?

The median amount of time for a commit to be deployed into production.

Why is it important?

This metric measures the time it takes to commit code to the production environment and reflects the speed of software delivery. A lower average change preparation time means that your team is efficient at coding and deploying your project.

Which dashboard(s) does it exist in

N/A

How is it calculated?

This metric can be calculated in two ways:

• If a deployment can be linked to PRs, then the lead time for changes of a deployment is the average cycle time of its associated PRs. For instance,
  • Compared to the previous deployment deploy-1, deploy-2 deployed three new commits commit-1, commit-2 and commit-3.
  • commit-1 is linked to pr-1, commit-2 is linked to pr-2 and pr-3, commit-3 is not linked to any PR. Then, deploy-2 is associated with pr-1, pr-2 and pr-3.
  • Deploy-2's lead time for changes = average cycle time of pr-1, pr-2 and pr-3.
• If a deployment can't be linked to PRs, then the lead time for changes is computed based on its associated commits. For instance,
  • Compared to the previous deployment deploy-1, deploy-2 deployed three new commits commit-1, commit-2 and commit-3.
  • None of commit-1, commit-2 and commit-3 is linked to any PR.
  • Calculate each commit's lead time for changes, which equals to deploy-2‘s deployed_at - commit’s authored_date
  • Deploy-2's Lead time for changes = average lead time for changes of commit-1, commit-2 and commit-3.

Below are the benchmarks for different development teams:

Groups	Benchmarks
Elite performers	Less than one hour
High performers	Between one day and one week
Medium performers	Between one month and six months
Low performers	More than six months

Data Sources Required

This metric relies on deployments collected in multiple ways:

• Open APIs of Jenkins, GitLab, GitHub, etc.
• Webhook for general CI tools.
• Releases and PR/MRs from GitHub, GitLab APIs, etc.

Transformation Rules Required

This metric relies on the deployment configuration in Jenkins, GitLab or GitHub transformation rules to let DevLake know what CI builds/jobs can be regarded as deployments.

How to improve?

• Break requirements into smaller, more manageable deliverables
• Optimize the code review process
• “Shift left”, start QA early and introduce more automated tests
• Integrate CI/CD tools to automate the deployment process