Devops
Cycle Time in Software Development: How to Measure and Optimize
In today’s fast-paced software development environment, understanding and optimizing cycle time is crucial for engineering managers, team leads, and product leaders who want to deliver high-quality software efficiently. Cycle time—the elapsed time from when work begins on a task until it is delivered—serves as a fundamental metric for measuring developer productivity, identifying bottlenecks, and driving continuous improvement. This comprehensive guide examines the essentials of cycle time in software development, provides actionable steps for measuring it, and details proven strategies to optimize it, leveraging insights from git analytics platforms such as Gitrolysis.