## Definition **DORA metrics** are the four key performance indicators identified by the DevOps Research and Assessment programme (Nicole Forsgren, Jez Humble, Gene Kim — see [[Accelerate (Forsgren Humble Kim)]]) that empirically predict organisational performance. ## The Four 1. **Deployment Frequency** — how often the team releases to production. 2. **Lead Time for Changes** — time from commit to running in production. 3. **Mean Time to Restore (MTTR)** — how fast service is restored after an incident. 4. **Change Failure Rate** — % of changes causing a degraded service / rollback / hotfix. ## Velocity vs Stability - **Velocity:** Deployment Frequency, Lead Time for Changes. - **Stability:** MTTR, Change Failure Rate. High-performing teams excel on **both axes simultaneously** — the metrics do not trade off when the system is well-designed. ## Why They Survive the Agentic Era Old velocity metrics (story points, PR count, lines of code) are easily gamed by AI agents. DORA's four measure *delivered outcomes* — they hold meaning regardless of who wrote the code. ## The New Companion Metric **Cost per merged PR** (tokens, dollars). New, agentic-era specific. Trend matters more than absolute number. ## Anti-metrics Don't use: - Lines of code (any direction). - PR count. - "AI-assisted code %" (almost everything is now). - Self-reported "time saved" estimates. ## Practical Cadence Weekly snapshot. Publish to a wiki / Slack canvas / repo `dashboard.md`. The act of publishing changes behaviour the first month; the trend tells you whether the system is improving the second and third months. ## Related - [[Orchestrator Role]] - [[Decommission Discipline]] - [[Accelerate (Forsgren Humble Kim)]]