What is the difference between Lead Time and Cycle Time in a Kanban system?

All answers to this question.

Lead Time is the "Customer's View." It starts the moment a request is made and ends when the value is delivered. This is what the customer cares about. Cycle Time is the "Team's View." It starts when the team actually begins working on the task and ends when it’s finished. If your Lead Time is 30 days but your Cycle Time is only 2 days, your team is efficient, but your "waiting" stages are a disaster. To improve customer satisfaction, you must look at the gaps between the two, which usually reveal issues in your prioritization or intake process.

   Answered 2025-09-14 by Dorothy King

The gap between the two is where the real "waste" lives, but how are you tracking this in tools like Jira? Are you manually moving cards to a 'Selected for Development' column to trigger the start of Cycle Time, or have you found a way to automate these status changes to get more accurate data?

   Answered 2025-09-16 by Robert Harrison

• Robert, we use a 'Ready' queue. The moment a developer pulls a card from 'Ready' to 'In Progress', Jira automatically timestamps the start of Cycle Time. This eliminates human error and gives us a very clean look at our actual active work time versus the time stories spend languishing in the backlog.

     Commented 2025-09-18 by Michael Brennan

Focusing on Throughput is also vital. It tells you how many items you are finishing per week. If your Cycle Time is low but your Throughput is also low, you might have a capacity issue.

   Answered 2025-09-20 by Sandra Collins

• I agree with Sandra. Throughput is the pulse of the team. We use it to set realistic expectations with our Product Owner about what can actually be delivered in a month.

     Commented 2025-09-22 by Dorothy King