What are DORA metrics and why do they matter for CI/CD?
Answer
DORA (DevOps Research and Assessment) metrics are four key performance indicators that measure software delivery performance, validated by research across thousands of organizations. Deployment Frequency: how often code is deployed to production — elite performers deploy multiple times per day. Lead Time for Changes: time from code commit to running in production — elite is under one hour. Mean Time to Restore (MTTR): how quickly you recover from a production incident — elite is under one hour. Change Failure Rate: percentage of deployments that cause a production incident — elite performers have less than 15%. These metrics are correlated with both software delivery performance and organizational performance (profitability, market share). High deployment frequency and low lead time are enabled directly by mature CI/CD pipelines — your pipeline speed and test coverage directly drive DORA scores.
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