The DORA Metric Lead Time measure how long it takes to get commited code into production. What about the time spent leading up to that?

So Googling around the DORA Metric for Lead Time I find it is commonly accepted to be from the moment code is commited until there is code working in production

That makes sense – it's a great metric for measuring the quality of infrastructure and pipelines – and obviously some of the work done to deliver value to the customer. But what about all the time spent on work leading up to that. I'd always assumed that was part of the standard metric too:

How long it takes to a get a new idea to a customer

That is obviously harder to measure but seems more important in many ways.

I imagine I'll keep pondering this for some time to come 🤔