DORA Metrics
ELI5 — The Vibe Check
DORA Metrics are four numbers that measure how well your team delivers software: how often you deploy, how fast code goes from commit to production, how often deploys fail, and how quickly you recover from failures. Elite teams deploy multiple times a day with less than 1 hour lead time.
Real Talk
DORA (DevOps Research and Assessment) metrics are four key indicators of software delivery performance: Deployment Frequency, Lead Time for Changes, Change Failure Rate, and Mean Time to Recovery. Identified through years of research as predictive of organizational performance. Tracked via CI/CD analytics and incident management tools.
When You'll Hear This
"Our DORA metrics show we're 'high performers' in deployment frequency but 'medium' in MTTR." / "We track DORA metrics monthly to measure the impact of our platform investments."
Related Terms
Change Failure Rate
Change Failure Rate is the percentage of deployments that cause a production incident. Deploy 100 times, 5 cause issues? That's 5% CFR.
Deployment Frequency
Deployment Frequency is how often you ship to production. Elite teams: multiple times per day.
Lead Time for Changes
Lead Time for Changes measures how long it takes from code commit to production deployment. Elite teams: less than an hour. Slow teams: weeks or months.
Mean Time to Recovery
Mean Time to Recovery (MTTR) is how fast you bounce back from production incidents. Elite teams recover in under an hour.