The DevOps Research and Assessment (DORA) metrics have fundamentally changed how leaders interact with developers—and, in turn, how developers interact with their code. Although these metrics have changed significantly since their introduction in 2014, their intent remains to provide a numbers-based approach to improving the developer experience.
DORA metrics play a critical role in many development workflows. These metrics posit that four focus areas—deployment frequency, lead time for changes, change failure rate, time to restore service and reliability—can differentiate high-performing software engineering teams (elites) from lower-performing teams (non-elites).
Why is this a meaningful difference? High-performing teams reliably achieve faster time-to-market by removing menial tasks from their workload and expediting the development and deployment processes. Elite teams provide a better customer experience, deploy robust code faster and maintain better availability. And engineering teams that codify their procedures and track using DORA metrics are more likely to achieve these results in a shorter time frame.
Why are DORA Metrics the Baseline for Many Developers?
Most departments have tangible objectives and key results (OKRs) to present to executives. For example, the finance department typically looks to achieve a certain revenue threshold, while the marketing department may report on social media traffic or engagement.
Software engineers have spent years grappling with how to demonstrate success to non-engineering departments. Although it’s relatively easy to identify when a deployment goes wrong, many developers have difficulty translating how these breakdowns occur. Engineering teams cannot generate buy-in for necessary process improvements or tool adoptions without the vernacular to discuss success benchmarks.
DORA metrics provide a language for developers to use when speaking with executives and other teams. Moreover, DORA metrics enable developers to understand their process’ weak points and identify areas for improvement internally.
Making the Most of DORA in 2023
It’s incredibly frustrating to fall short of development goals or hit roadblocks like post-deployment errors and bugs. DORA metrics are the secret to circumventing these challenges. Here’s how DORA can go beyond codification to help your team achieve quicker, more reliable development and deployment:
Accelerate Time to Market
Tracking DORA metrics can significantly curb a team’s time to market—a key competitive advantage in the fast-paced world of software development. Enterprises that deploy more quickly and frequently accrue greater revenue over time than less efficient enterprises.
A streamlined deployment process looks different from organization to organization. That is why DORA metrics are essential; they pinpoint each organization’s specific areas of improvement, enabling DevOps leaders to make informed decisions about remediation. Common indicators for lagging time to market include non-orchestrated deployment processes and manual testing procedures, which distract developers from what they do best: coding.
Leaders looking to isolate issues with time to market should scrutinize their organization’s deployment frequency, as this metric can indicate process inefficiencies. Deploying irregularly? Your team may be batching too many updates, leading to overloaded, riskier deployments. Alternatively, infrequent updates may mean your organization has outgrown manual deployments. If that’s the case, consider adopting continuous integration and deployment (CI/CD) processes—these offerings improve time-to-market through immediate feedback and automated testing. Successful CI/CD implementations are proven to increase daily deployments by over 1000%.
Improve Development Processes
Although highly interconnected, deployment and development delays stem from different issues. Think of it this way: Low-performing engineering teams might deploy frequently—several times a day, even—but without quality assurance, those deployments are likely erroneous and may lead to extended system downtime.
DORA metrics are a powerful way to isolate deployment issues from gaps in the development process. For example, an engineering team that tracks DORA may find their deployment frequency optimal, but their time to restore service and change failure rate lagging. This discrepancy indicates the team needs to improve its testing practices by rigorously reviewing code and managing application dependencies better. Additionally, the team should consider implementing more advantageous deployment and rollback processes, including but not limited to progressive deployments and automated rollbacks.
Remove Menial Tasks From the Workload
Some organizations approach DORA metrics and other OKRs as productivity benchmarks that can be wielded against individual engineers. This perspective has even tinged how many developers view DORA metrics. Yet Google research demonstrates DORA metrics are most successful when adopted by high-trust, low-blame cultures. In these enterprises, DORA metrics reveal organizational opportunities for improvement—never should they reveal lagging individual performers or provide reasons for unnecessary busy work.
In fact, DORA metrics often eradicate rote tasks from developers’ workloads. Teams that use these metrics to identify and implement better incident management processes spend less time fighting fires (e.g., reworking code after a costly manual rollback) and more time doing higher-value work, like building new experiences. Automated processes like automated rollbacks and CI/CD empower developers to improve the quality of individual deployments while also reducing stress
Make DORA Work for Your Engineering Team
DORA metrics aren’t going anywhere soon. While they continue to evolve, like the recent removal of the elite category, they remain the industry standard for engineering OKRs, they provide a robust framework for success and a common language for developers and non-engineering stakeholders to communicate about performance, challenges and improvements in the software development process. DORA eases the collaboration and decision-making processes, creating an environment where leaders can consistently and effectively make data-driven improvements.
But these improvements are only possible when engineers are empowered by beneficial processes and tools. I encourage leaders who implement DORA metrics into their benchmarking to take results seriously. Is your organization’s time to market lagging? Interrogate your current developer workflow—and actively take steps to address issues through developer-first solutions. Doing so will not only improve your organization’s software delivery capabilities but also foster a culture of continuous learning and improvement.
