DevOps KPIs

devops-kpis

Introduction

DevOps KPIs (Key performance indicators) are an evolution of performance metrics aligned to organizations’ strategic goals. Businesses utilize performance management, which uses metrics and KPIs to monitor behavior and progress to ensure higher levels of success.

 

Using DevOps KPIs can assist in measuring non-qualifiable factors like the effect of time to market, new revenue streams, or improved quality. These non-qualifiable aspects are highly significant for cloud projects as clients seek to measure performance in areas beyond efficiency benefits.

 

Processes continue to develop as your organization advances and hits milestones along its app development/Cloud journey. Each milestone’s completion allows the organization to review and reevaluate the KPIs they initially specified for the app development/Cloud journey.

KPIs aim to communicate results accurately to allow management to make more informed strategic decisions.

devops-kpi

DevOps and KPIs: How to Measure DevOps Effectively?

A DevOps transformation involves a considerable investment of time and resources for an organization. Consequently, being able to evaluate performance benchmarks in a clear and precise manner enables organizations to set goals, achieve results, and boost productivity.

 

Since metrics and KPIs lack a defined framework, different organizations may have different definitions of progress and performance. However, the most significant DevOps KPIs have some basic reports and performance factors that keep the DevOps cycle on track.

 

DevOps KPI Deployment frequency

Monitoring deployment frequency daily or weekly can give you a clearer idea of the improvements that worked best and the areas that still need work. A sharp decline in frequency could indicate that the workload is unbalanced, overloaded with other tasks, or understaffed. The best deployment frequency indicators for sustainable growth and development show consistency or modest but steady increases.

DevOps KPI Change Volume

This DevOps KPI depends on the deployment frequency. A high change volume can indicate a successful iterative approach to the product, but it can also mean that the project is being too narrowly sliced and changes are being made solely for the sake of change. The amount of change with each deployment is monitored to provide a more precise picture of progress.

DevOps KPI Change failure rate

In DevOps practices, no single metric exists to measure the indicator of success. Deployment frequency is one of the best examples. Increasing frequency is one of the ultimate aims of a DevOps transition for better agility.

 

If the more frequent changes being deployed fail too often, the result could be a loss of revenue and customer satisfaction. The development teams or administrators must spend more time troubleshooting problems and fixing bugs than on high-value tasks.

 

It may be time to scale back and focus on long-term solutions for current problems if your KPIs show a more extensive change failure rate as deployment frequency increases.

 

Mean Time to Recovery (MTTR)

MTTR is a crucial performance indicator that measures how effectively your business resolves problems. The capacity to assess the effects on the company and the customer experience provides the understanding necessary to identify and prioritize issues correctly. 

 

If clients lost access, encountered issues, or abandoned the application, MTTR measures the average recovery time from failure to resolution. Boosting MTTR reduces costs and risks and maintains customer satisfaction.

DevOps KPI Lead Time

The lead time determines when the improvement will take place. Lead time offers essential information about the effectiveness of the development process and the present state of meeting the user’s changing requirements.

 

Reduced lead times indicate that your DevOps team is adaptive, productive, and capable of addressing feedback promptly.  

Defect escape rate

No matter how skilled your DevOps team is, errors still exist. Innovation is necessary for software development, and mistakes should be expected and planned for as part of the process.

 

The defect escape rate is a measure that compares the frequency with which defects are found and fixed during pre-production and production to evaluate the overall quality of software releases.

Unplanned work

This KPI aids in monitoring the overall productivity and satisfaction of a DevOps team and the quality of software releases. A comparison is made between the amount of work initially planned and the actual work completed. More than one-fourth of the planned work should not be unplanned.



Availability

One of the most crucial KPIs for any application is availability. Availability is of two types; complete and partial availability of the services or software application. Except for scheduled maintenance, minimum downtime is regularized by utilizing automation processes.

Service Level Agreement (SLA) Compliance

According to service-level agreements, all availability goals must be achieved by the infrastructure, services, and related applications. To maintain service levels, uptime targets as high as 99.999% are necessary, as application uptime is a crucial metric for all IT organizations.

Cycle Time

These metrics give a complete picture of application deployment by monitoring the entire process, from ideation or planning to user feedback.

Organizations define time differently for this KPI. However, shorter cycles are preferred.



Application Performance

Before end users report defects and performance issues, evaluating the performance at production and deployment levels is better. Organizations utilize tools like AppOptics, and Amazon cloud watch to trace application performance issues, system performance, and bugs.



Customer Ticket Volume

A seamless user experience is good customer service and frequently increases revenue. Thus, boosting customer happiness is a motivating factor for innovation. Customer tickets are, therefore, a valuable measure of the effectiveness of the DevOps transformation.

SMART framework for DevOps KPIs

The abbreviation of SMART framework to measure the performance of DevOps KPIs is;

 

SMART= Specific, Measure, Attainable, Relevant, Timeframe.

 

SMART acronym breakdown:

  • Is the objective specific?
  • Can an organization measure progress toward the goal?
  • Is the goal realistically attainable?
  • How relevant is the plan to the organization?
  • What is the timeframe for achieving this goal?

Conclusion

KPIs provide a valuable method for evaluating and monitoring a business’s performance on several different metrics. Managers can optimize the organization for long-term success by knowing precisely what KPIs are and how to use them properly. A good KPI delivers accurate, objective information about a project’s length. It offers a mechanism to assess and evaluate variables like effectiveness, quality, timeliness, and performance.

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