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Preventing the descent into unmaintainable hell: tracking and improving the DORA metrics

Preventing the descent into unmaintainable hell: tracking and improving the DORA metrics
From the 2023 State of DevOps report
Preventing the descent into unmaintainable hell: tracking and improving the DORA metrics

As I previously described, sooner or later, many software applications become unmaintainable. Applications devolve into a tangled and fragile mess that take forever to change. This usually happens because organizations neglect fundamental software development principles. As a result, the build up of technical debt eventually leads to a crisis.

A good way for an organization to prevent this mess is to hold its leaders accountable for measuring and improving the performance and productivity of the software development organization. In this article, I describe one set of metrics that organizations should track and improve: the DORA metrics. I cover what good looks like for each metric. I also briefly describe how to capture and improve these metrics.

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