DORA / Accelerate Metrics

Use it when you need a data-driven way to benchmark and boost your software delivery performance.

What is it?

DORA (DevOps Research and Assessment) metrics, popularized by “Accelerate”, are the industry standard for measuring software delivery performance.

They distill complex pipeline health into four clear KPIs: Deployment Frequency (how often you ship), Lead Time for Changes (speed from commit to production), Change Failure Rate (percentage of releases that cause issues) and Mean Time to Restore (MTTR). By focusing on these metrics, teams get an objective view of throughput and stability, spot bottlenecks in CI/CD, and align engineering goals with business impact.

DORA equips you to compare against elite performers, prioritize improvements based on real data, and evolve from gut-feel estimates to evidence-backed decisions.

Why it matters?

High-performing software delivery teams ship faster, recover quicker from incidents, and maintain greater stability, all of which translate into better user experience, lower operating costs, and faster innovation cycles. By operationalizing DORA metrics, you shift from firefighting to proactive improvement, unlocking sustained growth and a competitive edge.

How it works

Growth co-pilot turns your toughest product questions into clear, data-backed recommendations you can act on immediately.

Instrument Your Pipeline

Plug into your CI/CD tools (Jenkins, GitLab, CircleCI) and incident trackers (PagerDuty, Opsgenie) to collect deployment timestamps, failure events, and restore times automatically.

Calculate the Four Metrics

Compute Deployment Frequency, Lead Time for Changes, Change Failure Rate and MTTR over a consistent time window (weekly or monthly) to establish your baseline.

Benchmark Performance Levels

Map your numbers to DORA's performance bands, Elite, High, Medium, Low, so you know where you stand compared to industry peers.

Identify Bottlenecks

Break down your flow into stages (build, test, deploy, monitor). Use the metric data to spot where lead time spikes or failures cluster.

Set Targets & Iterate

Define OKRs around each metric, run experiments (parallel tests, trunk-based development, chaos engineering), and remeasure to validate improvements.

Frequently asked questions

Growth co-pilot turns your toughest product questions into clear, data-backed recommendations you can act on immediately.

What are the four DORA metrics?

The four are Deployment Frequency, Lead Time for Changes, Change Failure Rate and Mean Time to Restore (MTTR). Together they give you a holistic view of speed vs. stability.

What are the four DORA metrics?

The four are Deployment Frequency, Lead Time for Changes, Change Failure Rate and Mean Time to Restore (MTTR). Together they give you a holistic view of speed vs. stability.

How do I collect DORA data without manual tracking?

Automate it by integrating your CI/CD (Jenkins, GitLab) and incident management tools (PagerDuty, Opsgenie) via API. That way you get real-time metrics with zero manual overhead.

How do I collect DORA data without manual tracking?

Automate it by integrating your CI/CD (Jenkins, GitLab) and incident management tools (PagerDuty, Opsgenie) via API. That way you get real-time metrics with zero manual overhead.

What qualifies as an 'elite' performer?

Elite teams deploy multiple times per day, push changes in under an hour, keep failure rates below 15%, and restore services in under 30 minutes, benchmarks based on the DORA report.

What qualifies as an 'elite' performer?

Elite teams deploy multiple times per day, push changes in under an hour, keep failure rates below 15%, and restore services in under 30 minutes, benchmarks based on the DORA report.

Can small or early-stage teams use DORA metrics?

Absolutely, start by tracking Deployment Frequency and Lead Time. Even rudimentary visibility guides you toward faster feedback loops and lays the foundation for full DORA adoption.

Can small or early-stage teams use DORA metrics?

Absolutely, start by tracking Deployment Frequency and Lead Time. Even rudimentary visibility guides you toward faster feedback loops and lays the foundation for full DORA adoption.

How often should we review and act on these metrics?

Aim for a weekly review cadence. That keeps improvement cycles short, helps you catch regressions fast, and maintains accountability around your performance OKRs.

How often should we review and act on these metrics?

Aim for a weekly review cadence. That keeps improvement cycles short, helps you catch regressions fast, and maintains accountability around your performance OKRs.

You've benchmarked your delivery with DORA, now supercharge your next improvement cycle. Plug those metrics into CrackGrowth's DevOps diagnostic to uncover hidden bottlenecks and accelerate your path to elite performance.

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