Delivery age
Also known as Current item age
Definition
Delivery age is the time since a work item crossed a stated delivery start boundary while remaining unfinished. It is an active-work signal for intervention and forecasting.
Delivery age in practice
Delivery age is the time since a work item crossed a stated delivery start boundary while remaining unfinished. It is an active-work signal for intervention and forecasting.
A concrete example
An illustrative change entered implementation on Tuesday and is still waiting for deployment the following Monday. Its delivery age includes review and release waits under the team's boundary, so it is reviewed before new work is pulled.
How to use the signal
Compare this measure with cycle time, throughput, work in progress, and queue time. Define the start and finish events, inspect distributions instead of relying on one average, and record the policy behind any comparison. A useful measure should lead to a specific question about flow rather than a score for an individual.
Limitations
Age is not comparable when teams use different start events or exclude blocked periods differently. It also does not show value, effort, or the reason for delay by itself.
How this relates to Weave
Weave's engineering intelligence can help teams inspect delivery activity and timing around delivery age. Use those signals to find patterns and test workflow improvements, while keeping the team's work system as the source of truth for product, operational, and dependency context.
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