It’s difficult to survive the cutthroat business world of 2024 and beyond without a robust software delivery process and hence CI/CD pipelines are indispensable to thrive.
They facilitate faster release cycles, greater reliability, and overall agility. Yet, too often, CI/CD pipelines themselves become a source of friction instead of being the lubricant.
This is where DORA metrics come into play.
Of course they are crucial to understand your overall developer productivity and build a software development pipeline that is anti-fragile as a whole, they can play an interesting role in helping you understand your pipeline better as well.
Your CI/CD Pipeline's X-Ray
Since now we both agree that DORA metrics are helpful in understanding the bottlenecks within our CI/CD pipeline, let’s quickly have a look at all 4 at a glance with the CI/CD lens.
Deployment Frequency
High deployment frequency pushes for smooth processes and quick iterations. But prioritizing deployments without equal focus on quality will backfire sooner or later. DORA helps in finding the right balance for our context.
Lead Time for Changes
The time from commit to successful production deployment helps point bottlenecks. Long lead times expose issues like slow build, inefficient review processes, or limited deployment resources. Optimization here directly improves time-to-value.
Change Failure Rate
Frequent production failures may mean you’re not testing sufficiently or the integrations are more complex than they need to be. Reducing CFR helps being proactive about test coverage, well-designed deployment plans, and change management.
MTTR (Mean Time to Restore)
Fast MTTR means your incident response is swift and even your rollback mechanisms are quite effective. If you analyze your MTTR in parallel with CFR you can effectively pick up on processes that lack safeguards alongwith quick & reactive recovery.
CI/CD Specific Optimization Strategies on Top of DORA Metrics
Let's shift gears and dive into some hands-on strategies for using DORA metrics to fine-tune your CI/CD pipeline.
I’ll also add in an example for each point that I share with you here for some context and research.
In my opinion the best way for you here would be to take one of the points and then go into the rabbit hole and tweak things one by one so you can track exactly what is working and what isn’t for you and your team.
Automate As Much As You Can Sustainably
Manual steps drastically impact lead time and risk. To minimize human error explore automating builds, tests, deployments, & approvals wherever safe and feasible. Rugged CI/CD tools are imperative to execute this with consistency, reducing errors and aligning with DORA's focus on predictability.
Example: Etsy's move from infrequent deployments to multiple releases per day was built around extensive automation.
Pre-Release Testing is Key
A high CFR might call for shifting testing left. Spending time on comprehensive unit, integration, and end-to-end tests will make a huge impact. Extensive pre-release testing catches bugs earlier, lowering CFR while maintaining code quality.
Example: Netflix utilizes "Chaos Engineering" to test resilience and improve MTTR.
Feature Flags Act as A Safety
Decoupling deployment from release using feature flags can help big time. Code shipped behind flags, tested in production, and rolled out gradually, reduces the impact of failures and boosts DORA metrics too.
Example: Atlassian's uses feature flags extensively which enables experimentation and controlled rollouts.
Streamlining Workflows for Faster Lead Time
It’s quite important to review your pipeline periodically. Do you have redundant steps? Can approval gates rely more on automated test results? Optimizing things for an efficient flow helps you minimize idle time for code changes.
Example: Spotify optimized code reviews for speed without sacrificing quality, boosting lead times.
The Impact on Developers
CI/CD and DORA metrics help empower the team behind the software to create world class products most efficiently.
Here are a few things that can directly impact your developers, positively or negatively.
Slow, error-prone pipelines sap developer morale completely dry. The focus shifts from building to firefighting, leading to disengagement and higher attrition.
DORA-optimized CI/CD creates stronger pipelines. Reliable deployments mean less stress and more focus on innovation. And proactive safeguards in place help reduce anxiety of the on call call team members.
Here is what your developers should feel about their work with a strong software delivery process in place: "I trust my code, and I'm building features that truly make a difference for our users, and I enjoy building such software that has a real world impact."
Closing Thoughts
DORA metrics help you highlight hidden roadblocks in your CI/CD pipeline.
By strategically addressing bottlenecks, you can streamline software delivery, enhance reliability, and – most importantly – create an environment where your developers feel empowered and productive.
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