Skip to main content

DORA Metrics

"How good is our team's DevOps capability?" It's not easy to answer this objectively. DORA metrics solve this problem. Based on data from thousands of teams worldwide, they enable objective comparisons.

What is DORA?

DORA (DevOps Research and Assessment) is Google Cloud's DevOps research team. The team analyzes thousands of IT organizations worldwide each year and publishes the "State of DevOps Report." DORA metrics are the core result of this research.

DORA Metrics Overview​

DORA metrics consist of four key indicators.

  • Deployment Frequency (DF): Number of deployments to production. More frequent deployments mean faster value delivery to users.
  • Lead Time for Changes (LT): Time from the pipeline's source/build start until deploy completion. Shorter LT means faster response to market changes.
  • Change Failure Rate (CFR): Percentage of deploy stages that ended with status=failed out of all deploy stages. Lower is better.
  • Mean Time to Restore (MTTR): Time from incident occurrence to recovery. Shorter MTTR minimizes user impact.
Why these four?

These four metrics balance each other. Trying to maximize only deployment frequency, for example, often raises the failure rate. DORA metrics measure both speed and stability to show true DevOps capability.

Performance Grade Criteria​

KIOPS uses the following thresholds (as defined in code) to compute per-metric grades and an overall grade (overallGrade). Each metric's grade is determined by which band it falls into, and overallGrade is derived from all four.

Elite Grade​

The highest performance grade, achieved by world-class DevOps organizations.

  • DF: ≥ 1/day
  • LT: ≤ 1 hour
  • MTTR: ≤ 1 hour
  • CFR: < 15%

High Grade​

The level achieved by most mature DevOps teams.

  • DF: ≥ 0.14/day (about once a week)
  • LT: ≤ 1 day
  • MTTR: ≤ 1 day
  • CFR: < 30%

Medium Grade​

The typical level for teams that have started their DevOps journey.

  • DF: ≥ 0.033/day (about once a month)
  • LT: ≤ 1 week
  • MTTR: ≤ 1 day
  • CFR: < 45%

Low Grade​

Anything that does not meet the bands above — or CFR ≥ 45%.

If you're at Low grade

There's no need to be discouraged. By focusing on automation and process improvement, you can quickly rise to Medium or High grade.

overallGrade and healthScore​

  • overallGrade: A composite Elite/High/Medium/Low grade derived from all four metric grades.
  • healthScore (0–100): A health score obtained by converting each metric's grade to a 0–100 scale and aggregating. Higher is better.

Both values are computed by the backend and surfaced in the [Quality] tab of [Security Analysis].

Viewing DORA Metrics​

In KIOPS, DORA metrics are viewed in the [Quality] tab of the [Security Analysis] page.

Entry Path​

  1. Go to the [Security Analysis] page (/security).
  2. Open the [Quality] tab (/security?area=quality).
  3. The tab shows the four DORA metrics, their grades, and healthScore.
There is no DORA panel on the dashboard main screen

The "DORA metrics panel on the top right of the dashboard" or the "Quality Management tab of the service detail page" described in earlier guides no longer exists. DORA metrics are always viewed in the [Quality] tab of [Security Analysis].

Per-Service vs System-Wide Metrics​

KIOPS computes DORA metrics at two scopes.

  • Per service (scope_type = service): Aggregates only the target service's pipelines. This is what the [Quality] tab shows.
  • System-wide (scope_type = system): Aggregates pipelines across the entire system. Useful for organization-wide DevOps performance.

The two scopes are stored separately, so a particular service's grade and the system-wide grade can differ.

Daily Snapshots and History​

DORA metrics are stored as daily snapshots so you can analyze trends over time.

  • Daily snapshots are persisted on the backend.
  • A history query API lets you fetch DF/LT/CFR/MTTR over a date range.
  • Where a time-series visualization is surfaced in the UI may vary by environment; follow the in-app indication inside the [Quality] tab.

Detailed Metrics​

Deployment Frequency (DF)​

Measures the daily / weekly / monthly frequency of successful deploy stages.

How to improve:

  1. Automate CI/CD pipelines — enabling KIOPS's Auto CI runs builds on every code push.
  2. Build a culture of small, frequent deployments — split large features into smaller PRs.

Lead Time for Changes (LT)​

KIOPS computes LT as the time from the pipeline's source/build start until the deploy stage's completed_at.

Note: Git commit time is not used

The classic DORA definition is "commit to deploy," but KIOPS uses pipeline start as the anchor. The gap between the Git commit and the pipeline trigger is therefore not included in LT.

How to improve:

  1. Optimize build time — use Docker layer caching; remove unnecessary dependencies.
  2. Run tests in parallel to significantly cut CI time.
  3. Simplify approval processes — remove unnecessary deployment approval steps.

Change Failure Rate (CFR)​

KIOPS computes CFR as the ratio of deploy stages that ended with status=failed. It is based on the deploy stage's terminal status, not on rollback or hotfix tags.

How to improve:

  1. Maintain test coverage at 80% or higher.
  2. Enforce code reviews — block merge without reviewer approval.
  3. Validate in staging for at least 1 day before production deploys.

Mean Time to Restore (MTTR)​

The time from incident occurrence to recovery.

How to improve:

  1. Strengthen monitoring and alerting.
  2. Automate rollback procedures — one-click rollback to the previous version.
  3. Document incident response processes.

Trend Analysis​

A single number matters less than how it changes over time. As daily snapshots accumulate, you can analyze improvement trends.

History Queries​

KIOPS persists daily DORA metric snapshots on the backend. The history query API lets you fetch daily/weekly/monthly trend data for use in external analytics or your own dashboards.

Trend analysis tip

Review DORA metric trends together in weekly meetings. Asking "did we improve compared to last week?" each week makes improvement directions obvious.

Benchmark Comparison​

KIOPS's grade thresholds reference the State of DevOps Report from Google Cloud, so you can roughly gauge your team's position against IT organizations worldwide.

Real-World Usage Scenarios​

Scenario 1: Deployment Frequency from Low to Medium Grade​

Situation

Deploying 2–3 times a month, which is Low grade. The team perceives deployment as "scary" and "a big deal."

Improvement plan:

  • Step 1 — Enable KIOPS Auto CI: Builds run automatically on code push, removing manual work.
  • Step 2 — Split large features into small PRs: Enables frequent merges in small units.
  • Step 3 — Complete code reviews within 24 hours: Eliminates bottlenecks.
  • Step 4 — Minimize manual approval steps: Lowers deployment friction.

Result: Achieve one or more deployments per week, pushing DF ≥ 0.14/day (Medium toward High).

Scenario 2: Change Failure Rate from 30% to under 15%​

Situation

The deploy failure rate is around 30%, sitting on the High threshold (30%). Every deployment feels stressful.

Improvement plan:

  • Step 1 — Raise test coverage from 50% to 80%: Catch bugs before deployment.
  • Step 2 — Make SAST/SCA scans mandatory: Block security and quality issues up front.
  • Step 3 — Validate at least 1 day in staging: Catch production issues earlier.

Result: CFR drops below 15%, moving toward Elite grade.

Start small

Don't try to change everything at once. Improve one thing per two-week sprint.

Best Practices​

Team Culture​

  • Build a culture of small, frequent deployments.
  • Use failures as learning opportunities — use post-mortems to prevent recurrence.
  • Continuously invest in deployment automation.

Technical​

  • Optimize CI/CD pipelines to cut build/deployment time
  • Use automated tests to catch regression bugs early
  • Strengthen monitoring and alerting
  • Automate rollback procedures to reduce recovery time

Process​

  • Simplify unnecessary deployment approval steps
  • Document incident response processes
  • Review DORA metrics weekly or monthly
DORA review meetings

Spend just 5 minutes in your weekly team meeting reviewing DORA metrics together.