Ran cycle time breakdown on the Engineering health dashboard, Aug 30 to Sep 29
Cycle time is up 39% this month, and most of the increase is in review. PRs spend 26.6 hours there on average against a 5.9 hour median, so most reviews clear quickly while a subset sits stuck.
Cycle time breakdown
Last monthThis month
5.9hmedian review time
14 PRswaiting 3+ days, 11 opened by agents
Pickup is next, at 12.4 hours on average before a first review. Want me to show which reviewers these PRs are waiting on?
Why do agent PRs merge less often than ours?
Ran AI-assisted PRs, last 30 days
Over the last 30 days, 41% of agent-opened PRs merged, against 79% of PRs opened by people. Agent PRs that didn't merge were larger, averaging 612 changed lines against 188 for the ones that did.
Merge rate by who opened the PR
Opened by people79%
Claude Code agent46%
Copilot agent38%
Cursor agent35%
62%of unmerged agent PRs closed with no review
612average changed lines, unmerged agent PRs
Smaller agent tasks and a required first reviewer on agent PRs are the two changes most likely to move this rate.
Why did we miss the sprint?
Ran planning accuracy for sprint 42, Sep 15 to 28
The team completed 44 of 62 planned issues, a planning accuracy of 71%, down from 84% last sprint. 14 unplanned issues entered mid-sprint, 9 of them Payments bugs, while 18 planned issues carried over.
Sprint 42 issues, by outcome
Planned and completed44
Planned, carried over18
Added mid-sprint14
71%planning accuracy, down from 84%
9 of 14unplanned issues were Payments bugs
Want me to check whether Payments bugs cut into the sprint before this one too?
Are our developers stretched too thin?
Ran work in progress per developer, last 30 days
Developers have 3.4 items in progress on average, up from 2.1 last month. Payments and Mobile carry the most, at 4.6 and 3.9, and they also picked up the most review requests.
Items in progress per developer, by team
Payments4.6
Mobile3.9
Checkout2.8
Platform2.2
3.4items in progress per developer
2.3xreview requests per Payments developer, against Platform
Want me to show which Payments work has been open longest?
Pick a metric, or ask your own questionSend
Kraken cut review time by more than half in four months, from 2 days 15 hours to 1 day 3 hours at the 90th percentile.
Size and complexity accounted for maybe 5 to 10% of the slowdown. 70 to 80% came from time zone differences, team silos, and reviewer availability.
Skeelo's CTO built a culture of ownership around delivery metrics in LinearB and reduced PR review latency.
LinearB bridges the gap between engineering activity and business outcomes. It helps teams become more autonomous while giving leadership confidence in their execution.
