Download the 2021 DORA Report
The 2021 DORA Report is available in the following languages:
The report builds upon seven years of research, examining the capabilities and practices driving successful software delivery, operational excellence, and overall organizational performance. Using a cluster analysis, it benchmarks teams as elite, high, medium, or low performers based on five key metrics: deployment frequency, lead time for changes, time to restore service, change failure rate, and reliability. This benchmarking allows teams to understand their current performance relative to industry standards and identify areas for improvement. The study concludes that organizations embracing DevOps principles achieve superior software delivery, reliability, and business value. The report emphasizes the need to focus on solutions that fit the people and teams, not the other way around.
Key findings include
- High-performers continue to accelerate: Elite performers consistently outperform others across all key metrics and continue to improve their performance year over year.
- SRE and DevOps synergy: The combination of SRE and DevOps principles yields the highest organizational performance.
- Cloud adoption drives performance: Organizations leveraging cloud capabilities, especially those utilizing multiple public clouds, see significant improvements in software delivery and operational and organizational performance.
- Secure software supply chain is critical: Integrating security practices across the entire software delivery lifecycle is vital for performance, especially for teams meeting their reliability targets.
- High-quality documentation is foundational: Good quality internal documentation significantly improves software delivery and operational performance and the implementation of other practices.
- Positive team culture mitigates burnout: A generative team culture, where individuals feel included and a sense of belonging, is crucial for reducing burnout, particularly during remote work.
- Technical capabilities drive performance: Adoption of practices like loosely coupled architecture and continuous testing are strongly correlated with higher software delivery and operational performance.