Lead Time for Changes

Lead Time for Changes est l'une des 4 DORA metrics : le temps écoulé entre le premier commit pour un changement et son déploiement réussi en production. Mesure la vélocité du pipeline de delivery. Compose : code review time + CI/CD pipeline duration + deployment time + verification.

Tiers DORA :
- Elite : <1 day (some orgs : <1 hour)
- High : 1 day - 1 week
- Medium : 1 week - 1 month
- Low : >6 months

Factors réduisant lead time : (1) smaller PRs (review faster) ; (2) automated tests fast (no flakiness) ; (3) CI parallelization, caching ; (4) trunk-based development ; (5) feature flags (deploy decoupled from release) ; (6) automated deployments ; (7) merge queue avoiding merge conflicts ; (8) code review SLA (commit to first review <4h) ; (9) clear ownership (review routes to right people).

Mesurer : timestamp(production deploy) - timestamp(first commit). Tools : (1) Jellyfish, Sleuth, LinearB, Swarmia — automated DORA dashboards via Git + CI/CD integration ; (2) Google Four Keys open source ; (3) Faros AI ; (4) custom queries on GitHub API + deployment events.

Distinguer Lead Time for Changes (DORA) vs Lean Lead Time (idea to deployment, much longer cycle including discovery, design) — DORA focuses on engineering throughput post-commit.