Lead time and throughput: reading your delivery numbers

Ask a studio how long a typical job takes and you will usually get a feeling, not a number. "A week or two, unless the client goes quiet" is fine until a client asks when they will see something, or a busy month makes everything feel late and nobody can say whether it really is.

Two agency delivery metrics answer most of those questions: lead time and throughput. They are simple once you know what each one measures, and they come from work your team already records on the board. This article explains both, how to read them, and what to change when they move the wrong way.

Lead time vs throughput: two numbers, two questions#

Lead time answers "how long does a job take?" It runs from the moment a job is created to the moment it is completed. That includes the time the job waited in the backlog, waited for feedback and waited for someone to be free, because the client experiences all of it.

Throughput answers "how much do we finish?" It is the number of jobs completed in a day or a week.

The two pull on each other. If a team starts more work than it finishes, the queue grows, and every job waits longer before anyone touches it. Lead time rises even though nobody is working more slowly. Queueing theory has a name for this relationship, Little's law: the average amount of work in progress equals throughput multiplied by the average lead time. For an agency, the practical reading is short. To bring lead time down, finish more or start less.

What these numbers are not#

Before reading them, it helps to agree what they are not for.

• They are not a score for individuals. Lead time includes client feedback, approvals and hand-offs, most of which no single person controls. Ranking people on it teaches them to create jobs late or close them early.
• They are not comparable across very different work. A brand guidelines document and a one-line copy fix will never have the same lead time. Filter by project or job type before you compare.
• They are not targets. They describe how work flows today, so you can see whether a change to how you work made a difference.

Why the median beats the average#

Lead times are lopsided. Most jobs finish in a reasonable time, and a few wait weeks for a decision. Those few drag the average (the mean) upwards, so the mean describes a job that doesn't really exist.

The median is the middle job: half of the completed jobs finished faster and half took longer. It is the fairest single answer to "how long does a typical job take?"

Skybase shows both, as Median lead time and Mean lead time, and the gap between them is useful in itself. When the mean is well above the median, a small number of long jobs is costing you. Look at those jobs, not at the typical one.

Use the 85th percentile when you make promises#

The median is the wrong number to quote a client, because half of your jobs take longer than it. The 85th percentile is the time within which 85 in every 100 completed jobs finished. The tile describes it as how long most jobs finish within.

That makes it a promise you can keep most of the time. If a client asks how long a piece of work usually takes, quote the 85th percentile for that kind of work, rounded up to a date that means something to them. Keep the median for your own planning.

Where to find them in Skybase#

Open Reports from the sidebar, or press g then r. Choose a range, from Last 7 days to a Custom range, and a project if you want one.

The Overview tab starts with four tiles: Jobs created, Jobs completed, Overdue jobs and Active jobs. Below them, the Throughput chart shows jobs completed per day, or per week once the range is longer than two weeks. Turn on Compare to previous to see the jobs created and completed against the period before.

The Flow tab holds lead time. Its tiles show how many jobs were completed in the range, then the Median lead time, Mean lead time and 85th percentile for those jobs. The Lead time chart sorts the same jobs into buckets, from under a day to over four weeks, so you can see the shape at a glance.

Every filter and tab is covered in how to use Reports in Skybase.

Find out where the time goes#

Lead time tells you how long work takes. It doesn't tell you where it waits. For that, pick a single project, and the Flow tab adds two charts:

• Time in column shows the average time jobs spend in each column of that board. If jobs spend longer in Client review than in production, feedback is your bottleneck, not the work.
• Cumulative flow shows how many jobs sat in each column at the end of every day. A band that keeps getting wider is a queue building up. The history comes from nightly snapshots, so the chart fills in as the days go by.

Select a number or a part of a chart to list the jobs behind it. Choose the "Over 4 weeks" bar of the lead time chart and a panel lists the jobs that took longest, ready to open. That list is usually the most useful thing on the page.

Make sure "done" means done#

Both numbers count completed jobs, so they are only as good as the way your team finishes work. In Skybase a job completes when someone chooses Mark complete, or sets a status that has Triggers job completion. Moving a job to the last column doesn't complete it on its own.

If your team finishes work by dragging it into a Done column, an administrator can close the gap with an automation. On a project's Automations settings page, the Examples button offers one called "Done means completed", which sets the completion status whenever a job moves to your done column. Six automations that take hand-offs off your plate has more rules worth adding.

It also helps to create jobs when the work is agreed, not when someone starts it. Lead time then includes the wait in the backlog, which is exactly the part a client notices.

What to change when the numbers slip#

The numbers point at a cause. A few patterns come up again and again:

• Lead time is rising and throughput is flat. Too much has been started. Finish what is in progress before pulling in more.
• Time in column is highest in client review. Ask for sign-off on smaller pieces, agree a review date with the client when the job goes over, and keep every file's approval on the job.
• The 85th percentile is far above the median. A few jobs are stuck. Drill into the slowest bucket and deal with them one by one.
• Throughput has dropped. Open the People tab and check Open work by person and Task workload by person. One overloaded person can slow a whole board.
• Overdue jobs is climbing. The At risk panel on the Overview tab lists open jobs that are overdue, due today or due this week.

A worked example: Harbour Studio's month#

Take a small agency, say Harbour Studio, rebranding its client Northwind. On the first working day of the month, Maya Chen, the studio lead, opens Reports, chooses Last month and picks the Northwind project.

Say the Flow tab shows a median lead time of four days and an 85th percentile of eleven. The mean sits well above the median, so a few long jobs are pulling it up. Time in column shows jobs spending longer in Client review than in any other column.

Maya selects the slowest bucket in the lead time chart. At the top of the list is "Brand guidelines v3", which went overdue while Tom Becker at Northwind reviewed it. It was one large document, sent for review in one go.

Two changes follow. The team splits big deliverables into smaller jobs, so Tom reviews a chapter at a time. And the "Client review hand-off" automation now tells Tom as soon as a job reaches Client review, so the wait starts with a notification rather than an email from Maya.

When Tom next asks how long a round of guidelines work takes, Maya quotes the 85th percentile, rounded up to two weeks, rather than the four-day median.

Save the report and let it come to you#

A number you look at once doesn't change much. A number that arrives every month does. If you run work with outside agencies or freelancers, give each partner a project and the Projects tab sets them side by side: see managing agencies, freelancers and suppliers.

1. Set up the range, project and filters, then choose Saved reports and Save current view….
2. Give it a Name and choose Save. Administrators can also Share with the whole workspace.
3. With the report open, choose Schedule…, pick Every week or Every month, a day, a time and the Recipients.

A weekly email covers the seven whole days before it is sent, and a monthly one covers the previous calendar month. It carries the headline job numbers against the period before, overdue work by person and the jobs at risk, with a link back to the full report.

A checklist for reading your delivery numbers#

• Agree what completes a job, and make the board match it.
• Read the median for a typical job, and quote the 85th percentile to clients.
• Watch throughput next to lead time, never one without the other.
• Pick one project to see time in column and cumulative flow.
• Drill into the slowest jobs every month.
• Schedule the report, so the numbers reach you without anyone remembering to look.

If your board mixes stages and states, the numbers will be muddier than they need to be. Kanban for agencies covers the board structure that makes time in column worth reading.

Lead time and throughput won't run your studio for you. They will tell you, with a date on it, whether the way you work is getting faster or slower, and where the waiting happens. That is usually enough to know what to fix next. Reports come with every plan, alongside kanban boards, client approvals and automations.