Lead time compression checklist

1. Capture current lead time metrics per team; segment by service, environment, and change size.
2. Define small-change guidelines (PR size, story slicing) and update contribution docs.
3. Configure auto-review assignment, reminder bots, and AI-assisted summaries to reduce queue time.
4. Provision ephemeral environments per change with automated data seeding and teardown.
5. Codify compliance (security scans, approvals, audit logs) into pipelines; retire manual CAB meetings.
6. Optimize CI/CD stages—parallelize tests, cache builds, skip redundant jobs, and track flake rates.
7. Monitor review turnaround, environment wait time, and pipeline duration weekly; visualize trends.
8. Review improvements and blockers during delivery ops reviews; assign follow-up experiments and deadlines.
9. Share learnings and successes across teams to reinforce adoption and maintain momentum.

Prerequisites

• Value stream map with baseline metrics.
• Infrastructure automation capable of provisioning ephemeral environments.

Pitfalls

• Accelerating downstream steps without improving discovery or backlog refinement.
• Ignoring new testing or observability needs introduced by faster cadence.
• Failing to update compliance stakeholders, creating surprise or pushback.

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