Laws of Software Engineering · Law
Law
DORA / Accelerate Findings
Four numbers predict whether a software organisation is performing well: how often you ship, how long changes take, how often changes break things, and how fast you recover when they do.
How to use it. Measure all four together. Shipping often without tracking failures rewards recklessness. Tracking lead time without recovery time hides how fragile you are.
How it gets misused. Set as targets. They are diagnostic, like a thermometer. Targeting "ship more often" is the textbook way to break the measurement.
Related
- Pattern Westrum's Typology Three kinds of organisational culture, distinguished by how information flows. Pathological hoards it. Bureaucratic routes it. Generative shares it.
- Framework The Three Ways A way of seeing DevOps as a whole. Optimise flow from idea to production. Amplify feedback from production back to development. Build a culture of continuous experimentation and learning.
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Pattern
Goodhart's Law
Once a measurement becomes a target, it stops being a useful measurement.
Clusters
- The Measurement cluster - How to measure without breaking the things you measure.