DORA Metrics

Four widely used engineering performance metrics: Deployment Frequency, Lead Time for Changes, Change Failure Rate, and Mean Time to Recovery.

What is DORA Metrics?

The DORA research program (Accelerate, State of DevOps Report) identified four metrics that correlate with high-performing software teams. Tracking them exposes whether architecture decisions — coupling, deployability, observability — help or hurt real outcomes. DORA is diagnostic: the numbers are a prompt for the next conversation, not a leaderboard.

Also known as: dora, four key metrics.

Related terms

  • Deployment Frequency — How often a team successfully ships code to production. One of the four DORA metrics.
  • Lead Time for Changes — The time between a code change being committed and that change running in production.
  • Change Failure Rate — The percentage of deployments that cause a degradation in production and require remediation.
  • Mean Time to Recovery (MTTR) — The average time it takes to restore service after a production incident.

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