In the modern software development world, measuring performance isn’t optional: it’s essential for survival. However, many teams find themselves lost among an infinity of metrics, not knowing which ones truly matter. The answer lies in the four key metrics that have revolutionized how we evaluate software delivery performance.
From Accelerate to architecture
The four key metrics were popularized by the DORA (DevOps Research and Assessment) team and documented in the influential book Accelerate. These metrics aren’t arbitrary inventions: they’re the result of years of research on high-performing software teams, demonstrating a direct correlation between their use and organizational success.
What makes these metrics special is their ability to measure two critical dimensions simultaneously: velocity and stability. While the first two metrics evaluate how quickly a team can deliver changes, the last two measure how well they maintain system stability.
The four metrics explained
1. Deployment frequency
This metric measures how often a team successfully deploys code to production. Beyond being a simple counter, deployment frequency is a powerful indicator of the efficiency and adaptability of the development process.
Why it matters: teams that deploy frequently are better positioned to respond to market changes, gather customer feedback quickly, and continuously improve their products. Additionally, more frequent deployments typically mean smaller changes, which reduces the risk associated with each release.
Performance levels:
- Elite: multiple deployments per day.
- High: between once per day and once per week.
- Medium: between once per week and once per month.
- Low: less than once per month.
Deployment frequency is also directly related to batch size. When teams work in smaller, consistent batches, they can maintain a predictable work pace that improves confidence and reduces lead time for changes.
2. Lead time for changes
This metric tracks the time that elapses from when a developer commits code until that code is running in production. It’s fundamentally a measure of the efficiency of the entire delivery pipeline.
Why it matters: shorter lead times allow teams to innovate more quickly, address problems with speed, and adapt to new demands. In competitive markets, time to market can be a key differentiator. Additionally, when there’s a defect or outage, short lead times mean that fixes can be delivered rapidly and with high confidence.
Performance levels:
- Elite: less than one hour.
- High: between one day and one week.
- Medium: between one week and one month.
- Low: more than one month.
To achieve short lead times, teams need effective internal processes like automated testing, optimized deployment pipelines, and loosely coupled architectures where services can be deployed independently.
3. Change failure rate
This metric measures the percentage of deployments that cause service degradation in production and require immediate remediation, such as hotfixes, rollbacks, or patches.
Why it matters: a low failure rate is desirable because the more time a team spends fixing failures, the less time it has to deliver new features and customer value. This metric is crucial for evaluating the quality and stability of released code. It’s important to note that this metric doesn’t measure failures caught by testing before deployment, only those that reach production.
Performance levels:
- Elite: 0-15%.
- High: 16-30%.
- Medium: 16-30%.
- Low: more than 30%.
The same practices that enable shorter lead times—test automation, trunk-based development, and working in small batches—correlate with a reduction in change failure rates. All these practices make defects much easier to identify and remediate.
4. Time to restore service
This metric, also known as MTTR (Mean Time To Recovery), measures how long it takes a team to recover from a production failure and restore service.
Why it matters: failures are inevitable in complex systems. What distinguishes high-performing teams isn’t the absence of failures, but their ability to recover quickly from them. This metric reflects the team’s ability to handle incidents and maintain service reliability.
Performance levels:
- Elite: less than one hour.
- High: less than one day.
- Medium: between one day and one week.
- Low: more than one week.
Teams with good restoration times typically have robust monitoring systems, well-defined incident response processes, and the technical capability to perform rollbacks or forward fixes quickly.
The power of combination
When implemented correctly, these metrics do more than simply measure performance: they catalyze a transformation in how teams think about software architecture.
The four metrics lead to a flowering of learning and allow teams to understand the need for a high-quality, loosely coupled, deployable, testable, observable, and maintainable architecture. Instead of architects dictating and controlling, they can use these metrics to generate conversations with team members and stimulate the desire to improve.
This shift is fundamental: the metrics allow architects to “loosen their grip on the tiller” and empower teams to make informed decisions based on objective data.
Connection to business goals
A crucial aspect often overlooked is that these metrics must align with real user impact and broader business objectives. It’s not just about moving numbers on a dashboard, but ensuring that improvements in deployment frequency or recovery times contribute directly to organizational success.
Monitoring application availability, usage, and user satisfaction provides a comprehensive view of how well the delivery process is meeting user needs.
Common mistakes to avoid
When implementing these metrics, teams should be careful not to fall into common traps:
Turning metrics into goals: making broad statements like “All applications must deploy multiple times per day by year’s end” increases the likelihood that teams will try to game the metrics.
Isolating teams with specific metrics: sharing all four metrics across development, operations, and release teams fosters collaboration. Isolating teams with specific metrics can lead to friction and finger-pointing.
Focusing on measurement at the expense of improvement: metrics are a means, not an end. The goal is to identify areas for growth and celebrate progress, not create measurement bureaucracy.
Making disparate comparisons: these metrics are designed to be applied at the application or service level. Comparing metrics between vastly different applications can be misleading.
Conclusion
The four key metrics represent a simple yet powerful tool to help leaders and teams focus on measuring and improving what truly matters. They’re not just numbers on a dashboard, they’re catalysts for conversations, learning, and architectural transformation.
When used in a balanced way and in the appropriate context, these metrics enable organizations to move toward more sustainable architectures, more empowered teams, and ultimately, better business outcomes. The key is remembering that the ultimate goal isn’t to improve the metrics themselves, but to create software systems that deliver value quickly, reliably, and sustainably.
Our commitment at Solvisse
We are deeply committed to designing high-quality solutions for our clients that not only meet functional requirements but also excel in architectural excellence. We embrace these four key metrics as fundamental pillars of our development philosophy, ensuring that every solution we build is:
- Rapidly deployable – enabling our clients to respond quickly to market opportunities.
- Highly reliable – minimizing disruptions and maintaining service quality.
- Continuously improving – through data-driven decisions and transparent performance tracking.
- Architecturally sound – following industry best practices and proven patterns.
Our approach goes beyond simply tracking metrics; we integrate them into our culture of continuous improvement and technical excellence. By maintaining this focus on both velocity and stability, we ensure that our clients receive solutions that are not only cutting-edge but also sustainable, maintainable, and designed to evolve with their business needs. We believe that great software architecture is measured not just by what it achieves today, but by how well it enables our clients to succeed tomorrow. That’s why we make these metrics central to every project we undertake, ensuring that quality, performance, and reliability are never afterthoughts but foundational elements of our delivery process.
