DORA's four key metrics

DORA's four key metrics, also known as DORA metrics or the four key metrics, are metrics thought to indicate the performance of software engineering teams, as identified by the DevOps Research and Assessment (DORA) research program.

These metrics are:

Deployment Frequency - How often successful production releases are made within an organization.
Lead Time for Changes - The time it takes code to reach production after it was first committed to version control.
Change Failure Rate - The percentage of production deployments that fail or cause failure.
Time to Restore Service - The time it takes an organization to recover from a production failure.

The first two metrics, Deployment Frequency and Lead Time for Changes, measure the rate of forward progress whereas the latter two metrics, Change Failure Rate and Time to Restore Service, measure resistance to progress.

DORA scores organizations into groups of Elite, High, Medium, and Low performers based on these metrics.