A primary goal of software development organizations is to enhance the performance of software delivery and operations.
There are numerous best practices and differing opinions on how to approach "DevOps the right way." We've learned that IT organizations and software delivery are complex issues, which means that most of the time there are no "easy" answers. Instead, continuous improvement within a contextual framework is a critical element.
To introduce more objectivity and a measure of verifiability, we like to use the four key metrics suggested by "The State of DevOps" and "DORA." These four key metrics are:
To evaluate velocity:
- Deployment Frequency (How often a team successfully deploys to production, e.g., daily, weekly, monthly, yearly)
- Lead time for changes (the average time it takes to deploy a commit to production)
To evaluate stability:
- Time to Restore Services (For a failure, the median time between the deployment that caused the failure and the remediation)
- Change Failure Rate (The number of failures per number of deployments)
About DORA
The DevOps Research and Assessment (DORA) is the largest and longest-running research program of its kind, aiming to understand the capabilities driving software delivery and operations performance. Their report, "The State of DevOps," regularly provides insights, observations, and insights into high-performing IT organizations.