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DORA Metrics
The four measures of software delivery performance. What they measure, what good looks like, and how to use them to improve.
Video Lesson
A video lesson for this topic is in development. The library articles and mission exercises cover the same material in the meantime.
What is DORA?
DORA — the DevOps Research and Assessment team — is a research group founded by Dr. Nicole Forsgren, Jez Humble, and Gene Kim. Since 2014 they have published the State of DevOps Report, surveying tens of thousands of professionals annually to understand what separates high-performing software organizations from low performers.
Their key finding: software delivery performance can be measured objectively, and it predicts organizational performance — profitability, market share, and the ability to meet customer goals. Performance is not a soft concept. It is measurable.
DORA's research identified four metrics that together capture the speed and stability of software delivery. They are now widely used as the industry standard for measuring DevOps maturity.
The four metrics
DF
Deployment Frequency
How often does your organization deploy to production? This measures the throughput of your delivery system — how frequently value reaches users.
Elite
On demand (multiple/day)
High
1× per week – 1× per month
Medium
1× per month – 1× per 6 months
Low
Less than 1× per 6 months
LT
Lead Time for Changes
How long does it take for a commit to reach production? This measures the flow efficiency of your delivery pipeline — how quickly you can respond to business needs.
Elite
Less than 1 hour
High
1 day – 1 week
Medium
1 week – 1 month
Low
More than 6 months
CFR
Change Failure Rate
What percentage of production changes cause a degradation requiring remediation? This measures the quality of your delivery process — how often you introduce problems.
Elite
0–15%
High
16–30%
Medium
16–30%
Low
46–60%
MTTR
Mean Time to Restore
How long does it take to restore service when an incident occurs? This measures the resilience of your system — how quickly you recover from failure.
Elite
Less than 1 hour
High
Less than 1 day
Medium
1 day – 1 week
Low
More than 6 months
Speed and stability are not a trade-off
The most counterintuitive finding in DORA's research: teams that deploy more frequently also have lower change failure rates and faster recovery times. Speed and stability are not opposites.
The reason is simple: small, frequent deployments are inherently less risky than large, infrequent ones. When something breaks in a small deployment, the blast radius is contained and the cause is obvious. Stability comes from deploying often, not from deploying rarely.
Low performer mindset
Elite performer mindset
How to use the metrics
The DORA metrics are most useful as diagnostics, not as targets. Goodhart's Law applies: when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure. A team that game their DF metric by deploying trivial changes has not improved their delivery system.
Use them to identify your constraint
Low DF with high LT? Your bottleneck is the pipeline. High CFR with slow MTTR? Your bottleneck is testing and observability. The metrics point to where to focus improvement effort.
Measure trends, not absolutes
Is your lead time improving quarter over quarter? Is your CFR declining? Trends reveal whether your improvements are working. A snapshot tells you where you are; a trend tells you if you are moving.
Compare to your past self
DORA benchmarks are useful for orientation, but comparison to your own historical performance is more actionable. You know your context; benchmark data abstracts it away.
Nexus Corp's DORA progression
The Nexus Corp missions are designed to move the organization from low performer to high performer across all four metrics. Here is the progression:
Snapshot
Deploy Freq
Lead Time
CFR
MTTR
Tier
Before M-01
1×/month
43 days
42%
72 hrs
LOW
After M-03
1×/month
14 days
18%
72 hrs
MED
After M-04
On demand
< 1 day
15%
48 hrs
HIGH
The path from low to high performer is not about adopting tools. It is about changing the system: shortening feedback loops, automating manual steps, reducing batch sizes, and building quality in rather than inspecting it in at the end.
Further reading
Accelerate — Forsgren, Humble, Kim
The book-length treatment of the DORA research. Chapters 2–4: the four key metrics, how to measure them, and what drives them.
DORA State of DevOps 2023
The most recent annual report. Benchmarks, trends, and the latest findings on what predicts software delivery performance.
DevOps Handbook — Part II
The technical practices that move the metrics. Chapters 10-14 map directly to the four DORA metrics.
DORA Quick Check
The official DORA assessment tool. Benchmarks your team against the research data across all four metrics.