DORA Metrics
Overview
DORA metrics are a set of key performance indicators used to measure DevOps effectiveness. They were developed by the DevOps Research and Assessment (DORA) team at Google, based on years of research into what makes high-performing engineering teams.
The Four DORA Metrics
| Metric | What it Measures | Goal for Elite Teams |
|---|---|---|
| Deployment Frequency | How often code is deployed to production | On-demand (multiple times/day) |
| Lead Time for Changes | Time from code commit to production deployment | < 1 day |
| Change Failure Rate | % of deployments that cause a failure in production | 0–15% |
| Mean Time to Restore (MTTR) | Time to recover from a production failure | < 1 hour |
Conceptual Overview
The DORA metrics focus on software delivery performance, and can help assess:
- Speed (Lead Time, Deployment Frequency)
- Stability (Change Failure Rate, MTTR)
By tracking these, teams can balance velocity with reliability, which is the cornerstone of successful DevOps.
Advantages
- Objective data to guide process improvement
- Aligns well with business goals (faster, safer releases)
- Identifies bottlenecks in delivery pipelines
- Promotes cross-functional collaboration
Drawbacks or Considerations
- Metrics can be misleading if viewed in isolation
- High performance doesn't always equal developer satisfaction (use with SPACE metrics)
- Needs consistent and reliable data collection
- Risk of gaming the numbers if used for individual performance evaluation
How to Track DORA Metrics (Tools)
- Azure DevOps: Deployment pipelines + work item tracking
- GitHub Actions + GitHub Insights
- Google Cloud’s Cloud Build + Cloud Monitoring
- Datadog, New Relic, Dynatrace
- Custom dashboards in Power BI, Grafana, etc.
Example for Your Team (in Azure DevOps)
| DORA Metric | Data Source |
|---|---|
| Deployment Frequency | Release Pipelines → Deployments log |
| Lead Time | Work Items → PR Creation → Prod Deploy |
| Change Failure Rate | Incident tracking tools (e.g., Azure Monitor) |
| MTTR | Time between incident alert and resolution |
Summary
| Key Idea | Description |
|---|---|
| What | Four key DevOps metrics to measure software delivery performance |
| Why | Helps teams balance speed and stability |
| How | Use CI/CD tools and observability platforms to measure |
| Benefit | Better decision-making, faster delivery, higher reliability |