Delivery Metrics

Purpose

Delivery Metrics measure pull request lifecycle timing, deployment progression, and stage efficiency. They provide visibility into how long work takes to move from coding through review, deployment, and release, and where bottlenecks occur.

These metrics evaluate workflow speed, process friction, and handoff delays.

Metrics Included

The following metrics belong to the Delivery family:

• Cycle Time
• Coding Time
• Pickup Time
• Review Time
• Time to Review
• Time to Approve
• Time to Merge
• Deploy Time
• Time to Release

These metrics collectively provide a full view of delivery performance across coding, review, merge, deployment, and release stages.

Each metric definition, calculation formula, normalization logic, and display behavior is documented in the Metrics Glossary.

Custom Stage Metrics

Organizations can configure one or more custom deployment stages to match their software delivery pipeline. Each custom stage has a customer-defined name and deployment detection rules that determine when LinearB considers a pull request to have reached that stage.

Examples of custom deployment stages include Development, QA, UAT, Beta, Canary, and Staging. Your organization may configure different stage names and deployment detection rules.

When a deployment is first detected for a configured stage, LinearB automatically generates stage-specific metrics for that stage.

• Time to <Stage> — Measures how long it takes for a pull request to reach the configured stage.
• <Stage> Deploy Frequency — Measures how many unique pull requests reached the configured stage during the selected time period.

Time to <Stage>

For the first configured deployment stage, Time to <Stage> measures the time from pull request merge until the deployment is first reported in that stage.

For each additional configured deployment stage, Time to <Stage> measures the time from when the deployment is first reported in the previous stage until it is first reported in the current stage.

<Stage> Deploy Frequency

<Stage> Deploy Frequency counts the number of unique pull requests that reached the configured stage during the selected time period.

Multiple deployments of the same pull request to the same stage are ignored. Only the first deployment reported for a pull request in a stage is counted.

Time to Release

In addition to generated custom stage metrics, LinearB provides the predefined Time to Release metric.

Time to Release measures the time from when a pull request is first reported in the last configured custom deployment stage until it is first reported in the Release stage.

Dashboards That Use Delivery Metrics

Delivery metrics appear in:

• Velocity Dashboard
• Time Distribution Dashboard
• Investment Strategy Dashboard
• DORA Dashboard (Lead Time component)

These dashboards combine Delivery metrics with Throughput and Quality metrics to provide contextual insights.

Related Metric Families

Delivery metrics often correlate with:

• Throughput Metrics (volume vs. speed)
• Quality Metrics (review depth vs. review time)
• Reliability & DORA Metrics (lead time and deployment performance)

Configuration Dependencies

Delivery metrics rely on:

• Pull request lifecycle events.
• Accurate stage mapping.
• Deployment mapping for deploy-related metrics.
• Custom stage configuration.
• Deployment detection rules for configured custom stages.
• Deployment events being reported to LinearB.

Improper stage configuration or deployment detection rules may affect metric accuracy.

Troubleshooting

If Delivery metrics appear inconsistent:

• Validate pull request lifecycle events are syncing correctly.
• Confirm custom deployment stages are configured as intended.
• Verify deployment mapping for deploy-related metrics.
• Confirm deployment detection rules match your release process.
• Confirm deployment events are being reported for configured stages.

For detailed troubleshooting guidance, see Troubleshooting.