# Reducing Time to Market: Where Time Is Lost Between Idea and Delivery

Author: Marin Niehues, Niehues Consulting · Published: 2023-10-05 · Delivery & Steering
Source: https://www.niehuesconsulting.de/en/blog/reduce-time-to-market/

You reduce time to market by cutting the waiting time between idea and delivery, because in most organisations the largest share of lead time sits in queues, and the work itself accounts for only a small part. A value stream analysis that measures how long work is actively processed and how long it lies idle finds the points with the greatest leverage. Usually these are approvals and handovers, along with too many initiatives running at once.

This article shows how to measure the time to delivery, which six time sinks occur most often and in what order management and business units tackle them. It includes a flow efficiency calculation that you can reproduce with your own data.

**Time to delivery shrinks when work waits less: for decisions, for handovers and for free capacity. Faster working usually brings little by comparison.**

## What does time to market mean, and how is it measured?

Time to market is the time from the first seriously pursued idea to the moment customers can use the result, and it is measured as the lead time of individual initiatives. The start and end points matter: the start is the moment the organisation decides to work on the idea, and the end is actual use by the customer, even if the initiative was reported "done" internally earlier. Measured this way, an initiative with a few weeks of pure work often turns out to have a lead time of several months.

Software delivery research uses established metrics for this. The DORA research programme, from which the book "Accelerate" by Forsgren, Humble and Kim (2018) emerged, measures four quantities, including the lead time for changes and the frequency of deployments. The findings show that organisations with short lead times also deliver more reliably. Pace and quality go together there, a result that matters to executives who assume a quality risk whenever pace increases. The method transfers to any kind of work, including product development, bid preparation and internal change programmes.

## Why does delivery take so long when everyone is fully loaded?

Delivery takes long because full utilisation creates queues, and queues extend lead time more than processing time does. Behind this lies a mathematical relationship proven by John Little in 1961: the average lead time equals the number of initiatives in progress divided by throughput. The law holds for factories, public authorities and development departments alike. Reinertsen describes how strongly queues grow under high utilisation: waiting time rises disproportionately as utilisation increases, and close to full load there is no buffer for disruptions, urgent orders or fluctuations in inflow.

An example shows the effect. An organisation has 60 initiatives in progress at once and completes five per month on average. The average lead time is 60 divided by 5, which is twelve months. If it limits work in progress to 30 and still completes five per month, lead time falls to six months. Throughput has not changed, nobody works faster, and yet ideas reach the market in half the time. In "The Principles of Product Development Flow" (2009), Don Reinertsen describes queues as the dominant but invisible cause of long cycle times in product development, because they appear in no cost accounting.

## How high is flow efficiency? A calculation

Flow efficiency is the share of lead time in which work is actually done on an initiative, calculated as processing time divided by lead time. The value stream mapping method that Rother and Shook described in "Learning to See" (1998) supplies the approach: you choose a completed initiative, reconstruct each step from minutes and tickets, and note for each step how long work took place and how long the initiative waited for the next step.

The following example is illustrative. An initiative had a lead time of 120 days from decision to customer use. The sum of the processing times was 18 days. Flow efficiency is 18 divided by 120, or 15 per cent. The remaining 102 days were waiting. Even speeding up the processing by a third would save only six days, while halving the waiting time saves 51 days. The calculation thus shows where a pound or an hour of attention has the greatest effect.

**Worked example of flow efficiency**
120 days | Lead time from decision to use
18 days | Processing time in which work was actually done
15 per cent | Flow efficiency (18 divided by 120)
51 days | Saving when waiting time is halved, against six days when processing is a third faster

## Which six time sinks cost the most time?

Six time sinks explain the largest part of waiting time in most organisations, and each can be tackled with its own measure. The table assigns each time sink its telltale sign, its remedy and its measure.

**Six time sinks between idea and delivery**
Time sink | Telltale sign | Remedy | Measure
Waiting for decisions | Approvals sit for more than a week | Move decision rights to the level that holds the information | Waiting time per approval
Handovers between departments | An initiative changes owner more than three times | One team owns the result from start to finish | Number of handovers per initiative
Too many initiatives at once | All teams are busy, nothing finishes | Limit work in progress | Initiatives in progress against completions per month
Dependencies between teams | One team waits for input from another | Plan dependencies jointly or remove them | Days in waiting status
Large batches | Delivery only after many weeks of work | Smaller delivery steps | Lead time per delivery
Rework | Results come back with defects | Agree quality criteria up front | Share of initiatives sent back

The first time sink, waiting for decisions, deserves particular attention because it lies in the hands of management. A committee that meets every two weeks adds on average one week of waiting to an initiative, even if the decision itself takes ten minutes. If an initiative passes through five such committees, around five weeks of waiting arise from that alone on average.

## How do executives reduce time to market in practice?

Executives reduce time to market in four steps, which in this order achieve the greatest effect. In the first step they measure lead time and flow efficiency for three to five completed initiatives, because decisions without this data rest on assumptions. In the second they limit the number of initiatives in progress per team, since that is the measure that works without restructuring the organisation. In the third they clarify decision rights: which decision has to go upwards, and which is taken where the expertise sits? In the fourth they cut initiatives so that one team stays responsible from idea to use.

A frequent objection holds that short lead times require more staff. Little's law refutes it for most cases: less work in progress shortens lead time with the same staff, provided throughput stays stable. More people help once waiting times have been reduced and processing itself has become the bottleneck.

**Checklist for the management**
- How long was the lead time of the last five completed initiatives, measured to customer use?
- What share of that time was processing time?
- How many initiatives run at once, and how many are completed per month?
- Which approvals take longer than a week?
- Who decides today on sequence and capacity, and who sees the whole picture?

## Reducing time to market with Niehues Consulting

[Niehues Consulting](/en/) is a consultancy for AI management and organisation design from a delivery perspective, based in Düsseldorf. Founder Marin Niehues builds organisations that deliver, in projects ranging from VC-funded scale-ups to DAX 40 corporations and in more than 20 countries across six continents. In the delivery management field he takes on assignments as delivery manager, project manager or product owner and designs the organisation in which delivery takes place.

The approach follows the Niehues Delivery Model. Three of its checks matter most for time to market: Who decides, who delivers, who uses? Which roles, decision paths and interfaces does operations need? Which metric shows after 90 days that the solution is landing? The first question exposes decision waiting times, the second the handovers, and the third creates the yardstick against which success can be read. Scope and terms of an engagement are discussed in the free initial consultation, which you can arrange via the [contact form](/en/#kontakt).

**Conclusion**
Time to market depends mainly on waiting time, and working speed plays a smaller role. Anyone who measures lead time and flow efficiency, limits the number of parallel initiatives and clarifies decision rights shortens the time to delivery without additional staff.

**Sources**
- Little, J.D.C.: A Proof for the Queuing Formula L = λW, Operations Research, 1961
- Rother, Shook: Learning to See, Lean Enterprise Institute, 1998
- Reinertsen, D.: The Principles of Product Development Flow, Celeritas Publishing, 2009
- Forsgren, Humble, Kim: Accelerate, IT Revolution, 2018

## Frequently asked questions

### What is time to market?

Time to market is the time from the decision to pursue an idea to its use by the customer. It is measured as the lead time of completed initiatives. What counts is actual use, even if the initiative was reported complete internally earlier.

### How can you reduce time to market?

Time to market shrinks most through less waiting. Organisations limit the number of parallel initiatives, clarify decision rights, and they reduce handovers while delivering in smaller steps. Faster processing is usually the smaller lever.

### How do you calculate flow efficiency?

Flow efficiency is processing time divided by lead time. With 18 days of processing in a lead time of 120 days it is 15 per cent. The data come from the tickets and minutes of a completed initiative.

### What is a good flow efficiency?

The yardstick for a good flow efficiency is your own baseline, measured on three to five completed initiatives. If processing time stays the same, doubling flow efficiency halves lead time: 15 per cent becomes 30 per cent, and the 120 days of the example fall to 60. Industry figures often compare different start and end points and serve only as rough orientation.

### Why do projects take so long when everyone is busy?

Projects take long under full utilisation because every additional initiative lengthens the queue. According to Little's law, lead time rises with the number of initiatives in progress when throughput stays the same. Fewer parallel initiatives shorten it.

### Does faster delivery need more staff?

Faster delivery first needs less waiting and only then more staff. As long as work mostly sits idle, extra capacity brings little acceleration. Additional people help when processing itself has become the bottleneck.

### Who in the organisation is responsible for time to market?

Senior management is responsible for the framework: decision rights, priorities and the limit on parallel initiatives. The teams are responsible for how they work. A role that sees the whole flow, such as a delivery manager, connects the two levels.

### What is the difference between lead time and cycle time?

Lead time runs from the decision to start until delivery to the customer, while cycle time usually covers only the period in which a team actively works on the item. Time to market follows lead time. Where the two diverge strongly, work is waiting.