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Do, Drop, Fail, Fix Metrics

· 2 min read
Adam Kecskes
Adam Kecskes
Operations and Engineering Manager

I was looking over the DORA metrics, trying to think of a mnemonic for the four options that would roll of the tongue a little more easily than "Lead Time," "Deployment Frequency," "Failure Rate," and "Time to Recover." I mean, "DORA" itself isn't even helpful, since it stands for DevOps Research and Assessment, which is the name of the project, not a acronym for the metrics.

I'm going to go with this simple dual alteration:

  • ✅ Do: Do the work. How long to do X? What is keeping us from doing Y?
  • ✅ Drop: Drop the code to the customer/client. How quickly can we deploy?
  • ✅ Fail: Count how often deployments fail. Where are the failures occurring? Why?
  • ✅ Fix: Fix the fails. How long does it takes us?

I think this greatly simplifies things. The DORA metrics themselves are fairly open-ended; this set of word choices simply act as a trigger to remember the more specific metrics.

If you want to see more details on DORA, check out my earlier post on the topic. I also like Atlassian's take on the matter, here. And remember, DevOps isn't a separate team from software development. It is software development.