How to Cut Down Cycle Time in Software Projects

Cycle time reduction strategies are a significant productivity booster because they drive smoother workflows, faster deliveries, and higher-quality software. To reduce cycle time, you first need to pinpoint and address bottlenecks and optimize transitions between tasks. 

But there are more ways to deliver solutions quickly. 

If you're wondering how to shorten cycle times and boost efficiency, you're in the right place. In this article, we’ll explore the key factors affecting cycle times, the benefits of cycle time monitoring, and effective strategies to reduce it. So, let’s begin!

P.S: With Axify, you can easily track cycle time across your development stages and gain valuable insights to drive continuous improvement, all from one powerful, user-friendly dashboard. Seems interesting?

What Is Cycle Time?

Cycle time refers to the total time it takes to complete a specific task, from the moment it is initiated until it is fully completed. Basically, cycle time can be used interchangeably with flow time.

In software development, this can include everything from the time a developer begins working on a feature, bug fix, or user story to when the work is considered "done." This means it has passed all necessary stages, such as development, testing, and review, and is ready for deployment or release.

Cycle time per deliverables

Cycle time for issues

Cycle time for pull requests

Cycle Time vs. Lead Time vs. Lead Time for Changes

It’s essential to know the difference between cycle time, lead time, and lead time for changes because each metric provides unique insights into your process efficiency.

Lead Time

Lead time measures the total duration from when a task, such as a feature request or bug fix, is created/requested until it is fully delivered and available to the customer. It encompasses all workflow stages, from the task request to work started and first commit through development, testing, and finally, deployment.

Lead Time For Changes

Lead time for changes refers to the specific period starting from the first commit made to the codebase until it is deployed to production. This metric can help you improve production time and manage delivery dates more accurately.

Why Improve Cycle Time in Software Development

Now, let’s have a look at several key reasons why improving cycle time is essential for your dev teams:

• Streamlined workflows: Improving cycle time enhances overall efficiency by reducing delays and eliminating unnecessary handoffs. With faster task completion, your team can maintain smoother operational performance, minimize bottlenecks, and ensure that resources are continuously used to their fullest potential. 

↓ This leads to:

• Faster feedback loops: A reduced cycle time allows teams to gather feedback more quickly. This helps identify defects or quality issues early in the process, which leads to faster resolutions and better product quality.

↓ This leads to:

• Higher product quality: Shorter cycle times help minimize the likelihood of errors and ensure that the final product meets customer expectations and is released with fewer issues.

↓ This leads to:

• Faster response to changes: Your team can react quickly to shifting market demands, trends, and customer feedback with shorter processing times. This agility is crucial in staying competitive in any niche, but especially in fast-paced industries.

↓ This leads to:

• Steady progress toward goals: When cycle time is consistently short and well-managed, you can predict task completion more accurately. This consistency supports better planning for future sprints and product roadmaps.

↓ This leads to:

• Reduced operational costs: A reduction in cycle time typically results in cost savings because your processes become more efficient. This efficiency means less unnecessary overhead and less time spent on non-value-adding activities.

Key Factors Affecting Cycle Time

Multiple factors impact cycle time. Understanding and addressing these factors is essential to maintaining productivity and ensuring timely delivery of work. Some of the most critical influences on cycle time include:

1. High Work in Progress (WIP): When your team manages too many tasks at once, it can lead to inefficiencies, lost focus, and neglect of important tasks. All these add up to eventually cause extended cycle time. 
2. Task complexity: Complex tasks naturally take longer to complete due to the amount of detail and resources required. This complexity is responsible for slower cycles, especially when tasks aren't broken down into smaller, more manageable components.
3. Dependency: Dependencies between teams or resources can significantly impact cycle time. If a task relies on the completion of another, delays in one area can create obstacles that affect progress.
4. Code review and approval delays: The code review process, while essential for maintaining quality, can sometimes introduce delays when feedback or approval is slow. Long review cycles can prolong – and obviously, delay – work, ultimately increasing cycle time. 
5. Team collaboration and communication: Clear communication and effective collaboration are vital for keeping cycle time in check. Misunderstandings or unclear expectations cause wasted time and rework, which prolongs the cycle time. 

6. Tooling and automation: When tools for version control, continuous integration, and testing aren't streamlined, teams spend more time on repetitive tasks. This increased manual effort directly impacts cycle time by making it lengthy.

How to Reduce Cycle Time in 6 Easy Steps

To optimize your cycle time reduction efforts, you can follow the tips below:  

1. S.P.I.D.R. Technique

The S.P.I.D.R. technique is a valuable method for improving cycle times because you’ll split complex user stories into smaller tasks that are easier to manage. This approach minimizes complexity and speeds up product delivery. S.P.I.D.R. stands for:

Spikes

Spikes are short, focused research tasks designed to resolve uncertainties or risks before starting development. They help clarify unknowns and reduce rework down the line.

Example: Imagine a Custom Notification System for a platform. A spike could focus on researching the feasibility of integrating third-party SMS APIs versus building a native solution. Once the spike provides clarity, the team can proceed with more precise user stories.

Paths

User stories often contain multiple potential workflows or outcomes. Identifying these paths allows teams to split stories based on different processes or user journeys.

Example: For a Subscription Management Feature, paths might include subscribing via a website, upgrading through an app, and canceling via email. Each pathway can be split into its own story for better focus.

Interfaces

Interfaces represent how users interact with the system. Splitting stories by interface ensures that different parts of the UI are handled separately and systematically.

Example: A User Profile Page might include an editable personal info section, a settings menu, and a statistics panel. Each interface element can be its own story, enabling parallel development.

Data

The type and format of data dictate how a story is split, especially when different data handling requirements exist.

Example: For a File Upload Tool, the team could split stories for handling text files, image files, and large media files, while specifying limitations (e.g., no support for uncompressed video files).

Rules

Business or system rules can make stories larger and more complex. Splitting stories based on specific rules ensures manageable chunks.

Example: For a Loan Application System, one story could handle eligibility checks for personal loans, another for mortgage applications, and a third for verifying supporting documents. Each rule can be its own user story.

2. The Walking Skeleton Technique

The Walking Skeleton technique involves delivering a minimal, working version of the software with its basic architecture and workflows early in the process. This allows you to demonstrate progress quickly and gather early feedback. This feedback is important because it helps identify and address potential issues sooner.

Moreover, the technique reduces idle time by identifying dependencies early on. This is how you prevent delays and improve the overall flow of the development process, which obviously leads to faster cycle times.

3. Optimize the Code Review Process

The code review process can significantly impact cycle time if not properly managed. Slow or delayed reviews create backlogs, frustrate developers, and extend the overall production cycle time.

To reduce cycle time: 

• Integrate QA early in the coding process by adopting a shift-left testing approach

• Set clear expectations for review response times
• Prioritize reviews based on task importance
• Ensure feedback is actionable and timely to prevent unnecessary delays

Tools like Axify can help you monitor this metric to identify areas causing frequent delays. Such insights help streamline the process, improve code quality, reduce the risk of defective products, and ultimately lead to faster cycle times. 

For instance, Axify helped the Business Development Bank of Canada (BDC) to cut their pre-development time by up to 74% and quality control time by up to 81%. This resulted in a shorter cycle time and up to 2X faster delivery rate. 

4. Enhance Team Collaboration and Communication

Clear communication and strong collaboration are critical to reducing cycle time. Without alignment on goals or a shared understanding of tasks, you risk delays, rework, and longer queue times, ultimately slowing down the entire development process. 

Let’s see how to enhance team collaboration: 

• Promote frequent communication through regular check-ins to ensure everyone is on the same page regarding understanding of the tasks. A McKinsey report found that effective communication can boost productivity by up to 25%, which can shorten cycle times through faster task completion. 

• Set WIP limits to avoid overloading the team and ensure focus on fewer tasks at a time. Reducing WIP leads to quicker task delivery and reduces idle time. If you don’t know where to get started, a good WIP limit ranges from the number of team members +/-1. This way, you can make sure all tasks are finished, and nobody is overwhelmed by too much WIP.
• Implement social programming techniques like pair programming or mob programming, which improve code quality and speed up work completion.
• Integrate QA early in the development process to catch issues sooner, which reduces the risk of defects that would otherwise slow down delivery.
• Create a knowledge repository to enable team members to easily access information and minimize delays from having to search for solutions.

5. Use Automation to Eliminate Repetitive Tasks

Automation is one of the most effective ways to reduce cycle time, especially when it comes to repetitive tasks like:  

• Testing
• Deployment
• Documentation

This eliminates manual effort, reduces the risk of human error, and frees up developers to focus on higher-value work and make continuous process improvements.

6. Streamline Change Approval

Change approval processes can introduce unnecessary delays in the development pipeline. When approval cycles are slow or unclear, it extends the cycle time and reduces responsiveness to customer demands.

You can streamline this process by: 

• Setting clear guidelines for what requires approval and who is responsible for signing off on changes
• Automating approvals where possible
• Ensuring that stakeholders have the information they need to make decisions quickly.

Having a culture of quick approvals or feedback is important as it can allow your team to fix errors quickly and minimize the impact of mistakes on the overall process. 

Metrics to Monitor For Cycle Time Improvement

You must monitor certain key metrics that provide valuable insights into the development process to effectively improve cycle time. These include: 

1. Average Cycle Time

This is the baseline for knowing how long it typically takes your team to complete tasks on average from start to finish. Measure the current performance of your developers not to point fingers but to identify trends and bottlenecks that can inform future improvements. 

2. Flow Time

Flow time refers to the amount of time work spends actively being processed, from the moment it's started until it's finished. It’s a critical metric for detecting inefficiencies and unnecessary delays in the process. 

3. Lead Time for Changes

This metric measures the time between the change’s first commit until it’s released to production. As such, it offers valuable insights into how efficiently changes move through the pipeline.

4. Deployment Frequency

The frequency at which code is deployed to production is directly tied to shorter cycle times. A higher deployment frequency typically indicates a more agile development process with faster delivery of new features, bug fixes, and improvements. 

5. PR (Pull Request) Merge Times

PR merge times measure the duration it takes to review and merge pull requests, i.e., code changes proposed by developers for integration into the main project. Longer PR merge times indicate issues in the review or approval process, which might delay the development cycle.

Best Practices for Sustained Reduction in Cycle Time

You can achieve long-term cycle time reduction by consistently applying these best practices: 

1. Set Realistic Goals

Achieving sustained cycle time reduction requires setting realistic, incremental goals. Drastic changes can overwhelm teams, so it’s better to target manageable improvements over time. 

Pro tip: Use Axify’s Goals and Reporting feature to set inspiring objectives and track key results tailored to your team. Define metrics, choose timeframes, and monitor progress to drive continuous improvement.

2. Regular Retrospectives

Regular retrospectives and team feedback are essential for understanding how cycle time changes impact your workflow. These reviews provide an opportunity to reflect on what worked well and identify areas for improvement. 

Pro tip: Axify’s Daily Digest can help you streamline team discussions during daily standups because it lets you focus on aged and high-risk items. Basically, use it to realign priorities and accelerate your decision-making. We always advise you to focus on older items first and not let them age too old. Dealing with this backlog helps you get a shorter lead time.

3. Focus on Quality

Reducing cycle time should never come at the expense of product quality. The key is focusing on quality to ensure that faster deliveries do not lead to defective products. In addition, you must incorporate robust quality checks throughout the process to prevent rework.

4. Empower Teams

When you empower teams to take ownership of their processes, they become more accountable and proactive in identifying inefficiencies. This leads to continuous cycle time improvement as developers implement solutions by themselves that drive quicker delivery and improved outcomes.

5 Common Mistakes to Avoid When Reducing Cycle Time

When reducing cycle time, be mindful of the below errors that are quite common and might backfire: 

1. Thinking Too Big

If you set unrealistic goals, it can lead to paralysis by analysis and inaction. Instead, break down larger objectives into smaller, manageable goals and focus on sprint-by-sprint improvements to reduce cycle time progressively.

2. Overemphasis on Speed

While reducing cycle time is important, pushing for speed at the expense of quality can lead to burnout and defects. Aim for balance, i.e., improving cycle times without sacrificing product quality.

3. Skipping Code Reviews

Rushing to shorten cycle times by skipping code reviews can increase the risk of introducing technical debt. Prioritize timely, thorough code reviews to catch issues early. That’s how you ensure high product quality and faster delivery in the long run.

4. One-Size-Fits-All Solutions

Standardizing processes is great in principle but can sometimes lead to inefficiencies. For example, you may have a different flow for normal user stories than that for hotfixes. It's important to learn from your hotfix workflows and apply those insights to improve your normal flow. But don’t apply it step by step without adapting it. You should always ensure that every current process is optimized for its specific needs.

5. Ignoring Dependencies

Dependencies between teams or tasks can cause delays if you fail to manage them properly. Actively track and mitigate this aspect to reduce idle time and improve team workflow.

Tools to Support Cycle Time Reduction

The following tools can simplify your goal of achieving cycle time reduction: 

1. Axify: With cycle time analytics, code review tracking (velocity and timing available by proxy), and collaboration insights, Axify empowers teams to spot bottlenecks and optimize workflows. This drives more efficient development processes. 
2. Jira: Offers engineering leaders a clear view of task progress and dependencies, through which you can track cycle time across various project stages and ensure nothing slips through the cracks.
3. CI/CD tools (e.g., Jenkins): These software solutions automate build, test, and deployment processes to reduce manual delays and speed up the overall delivery cycle
4. Communication tools (e.g., Slack, MS Teams): Such platforms streamline communication and help you quickly resolve blockers, stay aligned, and reduce delays for a smoother workflow.

Insider tip: Axify’s seamless integration with project management and CI/CD tools enables comprehensive cycle time (and related KPI) tracking from start to finish. It also reduces the need to jump between platforms and ensures continuous, uninterrupted flow.

Conclusion: Leverage Axify to Improve Your Workflow

Shortening cycle times ensures that you’re delivering the finished product sooner. This gives you a competitive edge, reduces overhead costs, and improves customer satisfaction. This translates into higher ROI. 

However, achieving sustained average time reduction requires addressing multiple aspects, including finding systemic issues, workflow optimization, dependency management, and process automation. Employee morale plays an equally big part.

That’s where Axify comes in. 

With its engineering metrics dashboard, Axify empowers you to navigate these complexities effortlessly. You'll get the complete picture of key metrics, such as cycle time, flow efficiency, lead time for changes, and more. This will help you identify bottlenecks and track progress, which has a direct impact on your business processes. 

Ready to take control of your cycle time? Book a demo with Axify today!