Software development is a multifaceted discipline that requires constant surveying. Without metrics and data, development teams have no way to know if they’re making progress toward the project’s goals. Like most aspects of software development, there is a huge range of metrics that can be tracked, each of which provides a different perspective on the project.
When it comes to what metrics should be prioritized, the challenge shifts from simple data collection to developing a strategy for translating that data into actionable information. You can use dora metrics to obtain valuable data that allows you to make better business decisions.
Here are some of the benefits of using the metrics put forward by the DevOps Research and Assessment (DORA) organization.
- Decision making
When you know what your competitors are doing, you can make better strategic decisions. For instance, you can decide to copy their processes and save some money. DORA provides a framework for tracking metrics such as code complexity, code velocity, and release volume. If you decide to enhance or change your strategy based on the metrics, then it will make decision-making easier.
- Process improvement
There are some processes in the software development life cycle that can cause bottlenecks and delays. This is especially true in the case of distributed and cross-functional teams. The metrics provided by DORA help to identify areas where bottlenecks exist and then provide data that helps to eliminate them.
- Delivering value
DORA provides metrics that help to identify value and effectiveness. This is useful in areas such as customer satisfaction, competitive analysis, quality assurance, security, and productivity. The main goal of tracking metrics is to provide information that helps individuals within the team change their behavior and then achieve a common goal, in this case, its value delivery. For this reason, it’s important to track metrics that provide data on who is responsible for creating value and how they are performing.
- Virtuous cycle
DORA metrics are useful in areas such as quality assurance and development processes. The metrics can be used to develop a virtuous cycle where an individual metric improves quality assurance. In turn, the improvement in quality leads to a reduction in costs, which is then followed by better productivity and performance.
