Sprints and planning · Taskending editorial team
How to interpret cycle time
Cycle time measures elapsed time between starting and completing work. It differs from active effort recorded in worklogs.
· 1 min read
How to apply it
When reviewing Taskending’s start-to-completion measures, compare similar types of work. Inspect long-running examples for waiting, review and dependency delays in their history. Look at outliers as well as an average.
A concrete example
A fix may take two hours of effort but wait four days for review. Logged effort is low while cycle time is long. Faster coding would not address the review queue.
What to watch for
Missing historical start or completion data makes precise measures unreliable. Do not interpret unknown history as zero. Avoid turning comparisons across different task sizes into individual performance rankings.
How to check the outcome
Sample three long-cycle issues and verify that dates match actual events. Begin improvement with a small change targeting the most common waiting reason.
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