What are DORA Metrics, and How Do They Improve Dev Teams?

Software development teams are responsible for researching, designing, and managing software programs in an organization. They can transition any maintenance and ensure high-quality coding to offer innovative products in the market. Their potential to brainstorm can fulfill important projects and goals quickly.

To get the best out of a software development team, it's important to gauge the efficacy of these teams every now and then. And the best way to do so is through DORA Metrics.

DORA Metrics are KPIs (key performance indicators) that offer valuable insights into critical areas of a development team. It helps the teams to measure the effectiveness of their processes and deliver the best outcomes from the same. Here's more to it:

What are DORA Metrics?

DORA Metrics is a standard framework that allows developers/engineers to assess their software delivery on the basis of velocity and stability. These metrics have been introduced after seven years of thorough research by the DevOps Research and Assessments Group (DORA).

With its incredible metrics framework, the team at DORA came up with performance benchmarks for the metrics, showing whether the teams are elite, high-performing, medium, or low-performing. DORA Metrics are divided into five elements:

Deployment Frequency (DF)

Deployment frequency denotes the speed at which your team is delivering software. It's an efficient way to assess the throughput of the team and estimate the value that's being offered to the customers. With high DF, teams can track how quickly they can apply multiple fixes and features.

DF is quite easy to measure. You simply need to count how many times deployments are made in a day/week, and you'll get your DF. Based on the DF, companies can be:

Elite: More than once a day

High Performing: Once a week/month

Medium Performing: Once in one month or six months

Low Performing: Less than once in 6 months

Mean Change Lead Time (MLT)

Change lead time stands for the time between the commencement and deployment of work change. It shows the agility and responsiveness of the team toward the demands/needs of users. If any team takes too much time to release code into production, it shows they're still lacking in efficiency.

Elite: 1 hour or less

High Performing: 1 day to 1 week

Medium Performing: 1 to 6 months

Low Performing: More than six months

Mean Time To Recover (MTTR)

MTTR denotes how quickly the issue was resolved when any failures or incidents were reported in production. To estimate the MTTR, you have to detect whether there's any problem first. And if there is, how to ship a change out?

When a development team requires too much time to recover from the failures, it shows that their MTTR is low. However, with consistent monitoring and progressive delivery, they can improve their MTTR easily.

Elite: 1 hour or less

High Performing: 1 day or less

Medium Performing: 1 day to a week

Low Performing: More than six months

Change Failure Rate (CFR)

CFR measures the rate at which production changes cause incidents or failures. It can be easily determined by dividing the number of failed deployments in production by the total product deployments.

It's an efficient way for the leaders to identify the time utilized for addressing bugs in the code that's being shipped. Usually, the development team should aim for a CFR between 0 to 15%.

Elite: 0-15%

High Performing: 16-30%

Medium Performing: 16-30%

Low Performing: 16-30%

Reliability

Reliability is a new addition to the DORA Metrics (as a complementary) for operational performance. It shows how well the development team meets users' expectations, including performance and availability. Note that reliability depends on service level indicators/objectives. That's why there are no such clusters as low, medium, or high.

Development teams can interpret their reliability based on their own targets.

How Does DORA Metrics Improve Dev Teams?

DORA Metrics can improve and benefit the development teams by the following means:

Good Decision Making

DORA Metrics can encourage data-based decisions and drive value to the organization. It can streamline both the development and delivery process to ensure successful softwares runs in the future rather than solely relying on gut instincts. It can also allow companies to find loopholes and recover from the same.

Performance Indicator

One of the crucial aspects of DORA Metrics is how it helps to offer quick and seamless visualization of performance trends as per different key metrics. This eventually helps the development teams to come up with improved outcomes and offer good economic significance in the long run.

Trust in Organization

DORA Metrics prevents any conflict or disagreement in the organization and maintains trust throughout the team. With such benefits, development teams can create high-quality and quick softwares as per customer demands. DORA Metrics can also result in a tangible and visible development process that keeps the entire team intact.

Focus on Fine Details:

Amidst the strong competition in the industry, it's important for dev teams to stay in their best position. In such cases, DORA Metrics can help by offering finer details and detailed insights into the team. If done right, DORA Metrics can modernize your organization and give you an edge against competitors.

Customer Satisfaction

DORA Metrics can encourage successful development teams and, eventually, customer satisfaction in the long term. By mentioning DORA Metrics to your customers, you can ensure that they are in good hands. Meanwhile, customers can stay assured of being associated with an organization that isn't just limited to software development but consistent improvement in their services.  

Final Notes

To ensure a successful development team, DORA Metrics is an important framework to consider. However, if you're working with a remote development team, it's management is crucial too. That's why you should combine your DORA Metrics analysis with the efficient remote team management services of Brix.

Our seamless services can unlock valuable insights for your development team and drive performance through competitive analysis. It can ensure a well-coordinated working experience and an in-depth productivity evaluation for better team management. Try out Brix today and see improvements in your development team instantly.

‍