Nico Krüger, Senior Director at Rollbar, discusses DORA metrics that drive software delivery performance, emphasizing the advantages of high-performing teams regarding deployment frequency, lead time, and stability. High performers achieve significantly faster deployments and recover from incidents more efficiently, thereby improving software stability and reducing time spent on fixing security issues. Best practices from elite teams include automating deployments and utilizing feature flags to enhance performance and reduce failures.

5. DORA Metrics: Elite and High Performers Best
Practices

6. Nico Krüger
Senior Director, Customer Engineering at Rollbar
Nico is the Senior Director of Customer Engineering at Rollbar, the leading continuous
code improvement platform. He has spent over 13 years working with companies
around the world to improve their software development lifecycle focused on quality
critical applications. His passion is helping teams deliver quality products to market
faster.
“Do what you love and love what you do!”

7. Agenda
1. Introduction to DORA Metrics
2. Benefits of Elite and High Performers
3. Best Practices
4. Real Results

8. Introduction to DORA

9. DevOps Research and Assessment Project
Google’s DORA team conducted a six-year research program which validated a
number of technical, process, measurement, and cultural capabilities that drive
higher software delivery and organizational performance.

10. 4 Key DORA Metrics

11. How to measure?
Aspect of Software Delivery
Performance
Elite High Medium Low
Deployment Frequency On-demand (multiple
deploys per day)
Between once per
day and once per
week
Between once per week
and once per month
Between once per
month and once every
six months
Lead time for changes Less than one day Between one day
and one week
Between one week and
one month
Between one month
and six months
Time to restore service Less than one hour Less than one day Less than one day Between one week and
one month
Change failure rate 0-15% 0-15% 0-15% 46-60%

12. What are the benefits of becoming
an Elite Performer...

13. The best teams deploy 208x more frequently and have lead times 106x faster when
compared to low performers.
More frequent
deployments
Faster than low
performers
208x 106x
Increased Speed of Deployments

14. High performers don’t trade off speed and stability. The best teams recover from incidents
2.604x faster and have change fail rates 7x lower.
Faster recovery Lower change failure
rates
2.604x 7x
Improved Software Stability

15. High performers spend 50% less time fixing security issues compared to low performers.
Less time fixing
security issues
50%
Build Security in from the Start

16. Best Practices

17. Rollbar at a
glance
>3b
error events per month
>50,000
active applications
17
Helping developers build software
quickly and painlessly
>36,000
developers
>5,300
customers
We know what Elite/High Performers do…

18. Fear of vs Knowing
What’s Breaking
Quickly identify what’s wrong and how to resolve it.

19. Code Level Insights
● Quickly identify what is breaking.
● Known vs Unknown.
● Code Level Context.
● Impact (System / Customers).
● New vs Existing issues.

20. Increase Deployments
Deploy Small Changes More Often

21. Release Trains

22. Reduce MTTR
Feature Flags

23. Automated Feature Flag Triggers
Feature Flag ON
(New Awesome Feature)
New Awesome
Feature!
Old Feature
Regular Users
Beta Users

24. Automated Feature Flag Triggers
Feature Flag OFF
(New Awesome Feature)
New Awesome
Feature!
Old Feature
Regular Users
Beta Users
Error

25. Reduce Change Failure Rates
Go / No Go - Pipeline Automation

26. Pipeline Automation

27. Reduce Time To Restore
Canary Deployments

28. Release v1
Deploy canary to 5%
Promote canary +
increase traffic
Take down
deployment
New error? Triage error
CRITICAL
Fix and release vNext
NOT CRITICAL
Mark as warning and continue
NO
YES
Hold
deploy
Critical Error
Remains
Canary Deployments

29. The journey...

30. Get more time back to iterate on code
Cut time to restore
service
Boost deployment
frequency
Reduce change
failure rate
Improve end-user
experience
MTTA: 99% faster
MTTR: 50% faster
MTTA: 24-48hrs →
<10 mins
MTTR: >24hrs → 12hrs
300x
more releases
Deployed new code every 3
weeks → dozens of daily
releases
87% decrease in failed
deploys
95% successful
deploy rate
(previously 50-75%)
40% reduction in
support tickets
Reduction in customer support
tickets related to platform
issues