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michelgrootjans / explaining-flow

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Cycle time instead of lead time #37

Open jalabarzo opened 1 year ago

jalabarzo commented 1 year ago

Lead time refers to the number of hours or days between placing an order and delivery

Cycle time refers to the number of hours or days it takes to manufacture a unit.

In this simulator, all items (requests) are already created, so we're measuring cycle time, not lead time.

mjw commented 1 year ago

In manufacturing maybe. You could argue you could use either for this explanation, which is looking specifically at team flow (in a software team in the video). Lead time is whatever you want it to mean in your circumstances, its a measurement of time between the start and end of a process, the start might be when a customer asks for something, the end might be when they receive it. But that process might be part of a bigger process, so then that measurement is a cycle time within that wider one and so on.

A better reason for using cycle time here is that littles law as its being used here (for knowledge work) is stated in terms of cycle time not lead (wait) time so would lead to less confusion if people are reading about littles law in this context.

Average cycle time = Average WIP / Average throughput