AI Lead Time Comparison shows the weekly average Lead Time for AI-tagged PRs alongside non-AI PRs, broken down by the same four sub-stages used elsewhere in Leanmote. It's the most direct surface for asking "is AI tool usage making PRs faster?"
What it measures
For each week in the period, the average Lead Time of two cohorts of merged PRs (AI-tagged and non-AI), with both cohorts decomposed into four sub-stages.
Sub-stage boundaries
Coding — from the first commit on the PR's branch to the PR's creation timestamp.
Waiting for Review — from PR creation to the first review interaction. The first interaction is the earliest of: a review comment, a post-PR commit, or an approval.
In Review — from the first review interaction to the first approval.
Ready to Deploy — from the first approval to the PR's merge timestamp.
The "deploy" signal is the PR's merge into the target branch (merged_at). Leanmote does not currently consume a separate CI/CD deploy event for this metric; if your team deploys post-merge, the actual deploy gap isn't captured here.
Units
Different surfaces show different units: the AI-impact view reports stages in hours, while DORA Lead Time elsewhere is reported in days. Both come from the same underlying data; only the unit on the chart differs. If a number looks off by 24×, check the unit on the axis label.
How to interpret it
AI lead time consistently shorter — AI tools are correlating with faster delivery for the team or repo.
AI shorter only in Coding — the speedup is in writing code, but review and release dominate the cycle. Real-world impact is smaller than the coding number suggests.
AI longer in In Review or Ready to Deploy — AI-tagged PRs may be larger or harder to review. Pair with PR-size views.
Wide week-to-week variance — sample size is too small. Aggregate over more weeks.
What to do about it
If AI-tagged PRs trend faster overall, document the workflows that produced the win and spread them.
If AI-tagged PRs are slower in review, coach toward smaller AI-tagged PRs and clearer commit messages.
Use this metric quarterly, not weekly. Single weeks are noisy.
Related metrics
Lead Time for Changes
AI Intensity
AI Return metrics overview