One department completes its work on time.
The next department completes its work on time.
Yet the overall business process still takes longer than expected.
How is that possible?
The answer may be found in the time between those activities.
A department can perform efficiently while the overall business process continues to experience unnecessary delays.
That’s why business leaders need to look beyond how long individual activities take and examine how long work waits before the next activity begins.
Measurement 2: Waiting Time Between Departments
In Part 1 of our Measuring What Matters series, we examined Total Process Cycle Time — the elapsed time between the beginning and completion of a business process.
This week, we’re examining one contributor to that time: Waiting Time Between Departments.
Waiting time occurs when work is ready to move forward but the next activity has not started.
Consider a customer order moving from Sales to Operations.
Sales completes the required documentation at 10:00 AM Monday.
Operations begins processing the order at 2:00 PM Tuesday.
The order spent 28 elapsed hours between those activities.
That delay may not appear in either department’s individual productivity measurements.
Sales completed its responsibility.
Operations processed the order once work began.
But the customer order remained unfinished while waiting for the next activity.
Measuring only the time employees spend performing their work can overlook the time work spends waiting to be performed.
How to Measure Waiting Time
The calculation is straightforward:
Waiting Time = Next Activity Start Time − Previous Activity Completion Time
For example:
- Sales completes its activity: Monday, 10:00 AM
- Operations begins its activity: Tuesday, 2:00 PM
- Waiting time: 28 elapsed hours
This measurement tells leaders how much time passed between two activities.
However, it doesn’t automatically explain why the delay occurred.
The organization may operate only during certain business hours. Work may enter a scheduled processing queue. A required approval may still be pending.
For meaningful comparisons, leaders should define whether they’re measuring calendar hours, business hours, or another relevant operating schedule.
They should also distinguish when work was completed from when it was actually available and ready for the receiving department.
These distinctions matter because the purpose of measurement is to understand process performance, not simply produce a number.
Why Work Waits Between Departments
Waiting time can develop for several reasons.
1. Unclear ownership
The sending department completes its activity, but responsibility for the next action isn’t clearly established.
Employees may assume someone else is monitoring the work.
2. Processing queues
Work arrives faster than the receiving department can process it.
Even when employees work efficiently, requests may accumulate.
3. Scheduled processing
Certain activities occur only at designated times.
These schedules may be necessary, but they can also introduce delays that deserve evaluation.
4. Incomplete information
The receiving department cannot begin because required information is missing.
The work may remain in a queue while someone seeks clarification.
5. Unnecessary approvals
Work cannot proceed until someone authorizes the next activity.
Some approvals are essential. Others may remain in place simply because they’ve always been part of the process.
Each condition affects the movement of work differently.
That’s why identifying the cause matters more than simply knowing how long the delay lasted.
A Completed Handoff Doesn’t Always Mean Work Is Moving
One of the most important questions business leaders can ask is:
When one department finishes its work, what actually happens next?
Does the receiving department know the work is ready?
Is someone responsible for accepting it?
Does the work enter a shared queue?
Are employees notified?
Is the information complete enough to begin the next activity?
These questions reveal whether the process has a clearly defined transfer of responsibility.
A department may consider its work complete when it sends an email, updates a system, or forwards a document.
But sending work isn’t the same as confirming that the next activity can begin.
A successful handoff should transfer responsibility, not simply transfer information.
How Process Mapping Helps Identify Waiting Time
A validated process map makes the movement of work between departments visible.
It shows where activities end, where decisions occur, and where responsibility changes.
But a process map alone doesn’t establish how long work waits.
That requires examining actual transactions, timestamps, queues, and the experiences of the people involved.
Leaders should involve employees who perform the work, feed the process, and are impacted by it.
Together, they can identify where waiting occurs, determine why it happens, and establish which delays are necessary or avoidable.
The objective isn’t to eliminate every pause.
It’s to reduce delays that don’t contribute to the intended outcome.
What Business Leaders Should Do Next
Start with a process that regularly experiences delays.
Identify two activities performed by different departments.
Determine when the first activity was completed and when the next activity actually began.
Measure the waiting time across several transactions rather than relying on a single example.
Then investigate the conditions contributing to the longest or most frequent delays.
You may discover that improving the transfer of work between departments creates more value than trying to make either department perform its individual activities faster.
Improving process performance requires understanding not only how work gets done, but how work moves between the people responsible for completing it.
That’s where measuring waiting time becomes valuable.
Next in the Measuring What Matters series: Handoff Readiness Rate and Clarification Request Frequency — examining whether work arrives complete, usable, and ready for the next activity.
How to Create an SOP from a Process Map