Understanding Dora Metrics for Software Delivery

A lot of leaders ask me about using velocity to measure development team performance. I *love* story points and velocity, but they're useful for other things--not truly understanding the ability for teams to deliver. The question to ask is, "What is my team's ability to *ship software*?" I encourage leaders to focus on the four DevOps Research and Assessment (DORA) metrics around Software Delivery Performance if they want to understand how their development organization is operating: Lead Time for Changes How long does it take to go from code committed to code successfully running in production? Deployment Frequency How often does your organization deploy code to production or release it to end users? Change Failure Rate (aka "How often do we break stuff?") What percentage of changes to production or released to users result in degraded service (e.g., lead to service impairment or service outage) and subsequently require remediation (e.g., require a hotfix, rollback, fix forward, patch)? Time to Restore Service (aka "How long does it take to fix it?") How long does it generally take to restore service when a service incident or a defect that impacts users occurs (e.g., unplanned outage, service impairment)?

For decades, engineering teams have been measured by lines of code, commit counts, and PRs merged—but does more code actually mean more productivity? 🚀 Some of the best developers write LESS code, not more. 🚀 The fastest-moving teams focus on outcomes, not just output. 🚀 High commit counts can mean inefficiency, not impact. Recent research from DORA, GitHub, and real-world case studies from IT Revolution debunk the myth that developer activity = developer productivity. Here’s why: 🔹 DORA Research: After studying thousands of engineering teams, DORA (DevOps Research & Assessment) found that the best teams optimize for four key engineering performance metrics: ✅ Deployment Frequency → How often do we ship value to users? ✅ Lead Time for Changes → How fast can an idea go from code to production? ✅ Change Failure Rate → Are we improving quality, or just shipping fast? ✅ MTTR (Mean Time to Restore) → Can we recover quickly when things go wrong? → Notice what’s missing? Not a single metric is based on lines of code, commits, or individual developer output. 🔹 GitHub’s Data: GitHub found that developers working remotely during 2020 pushed more code than ever—but many felt less productive. Why? Longer workdays masked inefficiencies. More commits ≠ meaningful work; some were just fighting bad tooling or slow reviews. Teams that automated workflows (CI/CD, code reviews) merged PRs faster and felt more productive. 🔹 IT Revolution case studies: High-performing engineering orgs measure outcomes, not just outputs. The best teams: Shift from tracking commit counts → to measuring customer value. Use DORA metrics to improve DevOps flow, not micromanage engineers. View engineering productivity as a team effort, not an individual scoreboard. If you want a high-performing engineering org, don’t just push developers to write more code. Instead, ask: ✅ Are we shipping value faster? ✅ Are we reducing friction in our workflows? ✅ Are our developers able to focus on meaningful work? 🚨 The takeaway? Great engineering teams don’t write the most code—they deliver the most impact. 📢 What’s the worst “productivity metric” you’ve ever seen? Drop a comment below 👇 #DeveloperProductivity #SoftwareDevelopment #DORA #GitHub #EngineeringLeadership

If you are trying to lead modernization or transformation of software programs in the government, YOU NEED TO KNOW about DORA and the State of DevOps report. 💥 💥 💥 The government is different from industry—yes. But the government can also perform like the best of the best in industry. It’s possible. This excerpt on the history of DORA from that 2024 State of DevOps report is cool to see. The first time I heard about DORA (DevOps Research and Assessment) was during my time scaling the AOC Pathfinder into what’s now known as Kessel Run. I was absolutely mindblown. DORA introduced the Four Key Metrics that help measure software delivery performance: 1️⃣ Lead Time for Changes – How quickly can changes be made? 2️⃣ Deployment Frequency – How often can teams deliver updates? 3️⃣ Change Failure Rate – What percentage of changes fail in production? 4️⃣ Time to Restore Service – How fast can teams recover when issues occur? These metrics aren’t just for tech companies; they’re for anyone serious about delivering impactful software, including government programs. Teams don’t have to sacrifice speed for stability. High-performing teams achieve both, driving not just mission success but organizational transformation. What I love about this year's DORA report is that they emphasized how 𝐂𝐮𝐥𝐭𝐮𝐫𝐞 𝐢𝐬 𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐲𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐠. High-trust cultures that prioritize collaboration, learning, and empowerment are the strongest predictors of success. - Measure what matters, but ensure your tools and practices actually improve delivery and stability. - Foster a culture that enables teams to experiment, learn, and recover quickly from failures. - Remember: reducing friction in the delivery process is just as critical as meeting user expectations. The government can match the best in industry, but it starts with adopting the right principles and practices. DORA provides the blueprint. DORA has been around for a DECADE. Believe that there is some truth and real empirical evidence behind it. DORA transformed how I thought about delivering impactful software, and it should for all of you change agents and bureaucracy hackers. #DevOps #DORA #SoftwareDelivery #Culture

A few years ago companies were most interested in growth at all costs. Today the focus is more on efficiency and staying under budget, which means that measuring developer productivity is a top priority for many companies right now. Earlier this year I took an incredible workshop by DX CTO Laura Tacho, who has figured this out with precision. She made sense of the notoriously elusive metric of how to measure a developer’s ability to innovate and work autonomously. She introduced DORA metrics, which offers key insights into the efficiency and reliability of a team’s software delivery process. It focuses on these 4 aspects of deployment and development teams: 1/ Cycle time: Measures how quickly code goes into production after it’s finished. 2/ Deployment frequency: Measures how often a team is releasing to production. 3/ Mean time to restore service: Measures how long customers are impacted when something goes wrong. 4/ Change failure rate: Measures how often defects are introduced during deployments. Laura explored another framework called SPACE, which takes the DORA framework and adds another layer of complexity by combining output and stability metrics with what goes into creating code. SPACE provides a comprehensive view of a development ecosystem by measuring: - Satisfaction - Performance outcomes - Activities - Communication - Collaboration, and - Efficiency The ability to track these metrics allows us to build better, more productive teams, so Laura’s insights have been invaluable.