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SHIPPED25: DORA... Beyond the metrics

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Most software teams have heard of the "DORA Metrics" or the "DORA 4 Keys", but there is so much more to the research. This session looks at those well-known metrics, but then takes you beyond them to some even more crucial insights into what great software delivery looks like.

Nathen Harvey and Steve Fenton introduce some key concepts, then abandon all slides to get hands on with some tools and models you can use to go beyond throughput and stability and out into the world of capabilities and continuous improvement.

Key insights

  • Throughput and stability aren't trade offs when you set teams up in the right way
  • How time to restore has evolved into failed deployment recovery time and rework rate
  • How to use the model to get better and getting better
  • How to use the assessment tool with your team to decide where to focus

2 Comments

•

Nice point here about throughput and stability not really being a tradeoff, kind of flips the usual mindset. Got me wondering how teams actually spot that balance early instead of after things break.

1 vote
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@[Greg Elfrink] my one caveat is that it's not a tradeoff if you're applying the right practices. If you're doing something like manual deployments and have no observability, increasing throughput would certainly cause pain. I'm sure most organizations are seeking speed "the sensible way" but I can imagine some boss somewhere trying to whip the team to do it the wrong way :)

The latest research from DORA shows quadrants of speed vs stability and it you can see organizations falling into the "slow and unstable" quadrant, and the "fast and stable" quadrant... so the things they do to speed up (automation) turn out to be good for stability.

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Steve Fentonverified
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Steve Fenton is an Octonaut at Octopus Deploy. He’s a Software Punk, author, programming-architect, ... Show more

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