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FeatureFactory
Free tool

Cycle Time Calculator

Break your delivery cycle into stages, see where the hours go, and find the bottleneck that is slowing you down.

Your cycle (hours)

Editable estimates. Enter hours per stage for a typical change.

Result

14h
~0.6 working days
  • Coding6h (42.9%)
  • Pickup (time to first review)4h (28.6%)
  • Review3h (21.4%)
  • Deploy1h (7.1%)
Biggest bottleneck
Coding takes 6h - 42.9% of the whole cycle.

How to read your cycle time

Cycle time is the clearest signal of how quickly your team turns intent into shipped software. When you split it into coding, pickup, review, and deploy, the story usually gets uncomfortable: the actual coding is fast, and the waiting is slow. The stage that eats the biggest slice is where you get the most leverage from a change.

Pickup time - the gap between "ready for review" and "first review" - is the most common hidden bottleneck. It is pure queue time, and it rarely appears in status meetings. Shrinking it is often cheaper than any tooling change: smaller pull requests, clearer review ownership, and faster notifications. Read our cycle time guide and reducing PR review time for concrete tactics.

Estimates are a fine starting point, but the real win is measuring cycle time from your actual pull request data rather than guessing. Explore cycle time analytics, dig into DORA metrics tracking, or browse the rest of our free tools.

Frequently asked questions

Cycle time measures how long a unit of work takes from the moment coding starts to the moment it ships to production. It typically breaks into coding, pickup (time to first review), review, and deploy. Shorter cycle time usually means faster feedback and lower work-in-progress.

Measure what you ship - don't estimate it

FeatureFactory tracks real cycle time from your pull requests, so you can fix the bottleneck instead of guessing at it.

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