What is DORA?

What is DORA, besides the cartoon explorer? Well, in the world of DevOps, DORA stands for DevOps Research and Assessment. It was founded by three experts—Dr. Nicole Forsgren, Jez Humble, and Gene Kim—before getting scooped up by Google, which seems to collect tech projects like Pokémon cards.

Why should you care about DORA?

DORA is like a fitness tracker for your engineering team. It helps you understand how fast and reliably you’re shipping code, so you can:

• Spot bottlenecks that slow down deployments

• Ship code faster without breaking everything

• Keep systems stable and reduce failures

• Track progress with real, meaningful numbers

If your team is serious about improving development speed and reliability, DORA gives you the data to make smarter decisions instead of just guessing what’s slowing you down.

What problems does DORA solve?

DORA focuses on four key problem areas in DevOps: Slow releases – Tracks how often you ship code (Deployment Frequency). Long feature rollouts – Measures how fast code goes from commit to production (Lead Time for Changes). Too many outages – Shows how quickly you recover from failures (MTTR – Mean Time to Recovery). Buggy releases – Helps reduce the number of failed deployments (Change Failure Rate). By keeping an eye on these metrics, teams can pinpoint weaknesses and actually fix them — instead of arguing about why things feel slow.

How to start using DORA

DORA isn’t something you just “install”—it’s a mix of culture, tools, and automation: Measure Your Metrics – Start tracking deployment frequency, lead time, MTTR, and change failure rate. Use the Right Tools – Platforms like GitHub, GitLab, Google Cloud, and Datadog make it easier to collect DORA metrics. Automate Smarter – CI/CD pipelines, automated testing, and infrastructure-as-code keep things moving smoothly. Improve Collaboration – Dev and Ops teams need to work together, not fight over whose fault it is. Review & Adapt – Metrics aren’t just numbers—use them to improve how your team works.

Common DORA mistakes

Focusing on numbers, not outcomes – Don’t just chase metrics; they should drive real improvements. Ignoring process & culture – DORA isn’t just a dashboard—it works best when teams embrace DevOps practices. Optimizing one metric too much – Deploying 100x a day is pointless if half of those deployments fail. Using bad data – Garbage in, garbage out. Make sure your data is accurate before making big decisions.

Final Thoughts

DORA isn’t just another tech buzzword—it’s a practical way to measure and improve how your team delivers software. Track the four key metrics, avoid common pitfalls, and keep improving. Want to go deeper? Check out SPACE. We wrote about it too. At DX Heroes, we help teams improve their developer experience using DORA and other best practices. Hit us up at hello@dxheroes.io if you want happier, more productive developers! 🚀