Key Metrics to track in 2021 for successfully implementing DevOps

Key Metrics to follow during DevOps implementation 

DevOps has largely transformed the way the software development process works. Ensuring that the best DevOps engineers work on the program following all the best practices doesn’t help. The program needs a concerted effort to track various threads and ensure all the functions involved are running smoothly.

A DevOps transformation often involves a significant investment of time, money, and resources to an organization, and can also demand an overhaul of everything from communication to training to tools.

Having a well-defined set of goals and KPI-metrices to track is the best starting point for implementation of Devops within an organisation. The business stakeholders alongwith the DevOps team should identify and agree on metrics that will help them implement DevOps processes to achieve the business driven initiatives.

This article aims to list down certain Key Performance Indicators(KPIs) that could help a program manager effectively plan and monitor the DevOps transformation process within their organizations or teams.

Speed of Deployment 

DevOps method of software development means the faster and agile launch of various versions of the application. If the versions are launched as per plan, then it poses no risk. However, if there are too many deployments and very frequent ones it indicates some issues in the processes. Hence this makes a key metric to track.

The Volume of Code Changed 

This is another key metric that could be tracked. It indicates the volume of code that was changed, or which is required to be changed versus the amount of code which continues to remain static. The reason that this metric is tracked is to measure the efforts or man-hours required for the successful execution of the project.

Time to Deploy 

DevOps-based software development is intended to speed up the process of deployment and increase accuracy. If there are frequent deployments and there are errors in the applications, it indicates that the development is not happening as per the plan and the project manager needs to have a relook at the whole development lifecycle.

Application Availability

This is another very important KPI or metric that should be accounted for a successful Devops implementation. Depending upon your technical stack and what deployment methods you use, your application might face a little downtime as a part of deployment or maintenance activities. Keeping a track of downtimes and all unplanned outages is a must.The availability can be either complete(read/write) or partial(only read). The lesser the downtime and outages, the better it is.

Lead time

Lead time can be defined as the time it takes from idea initiation and development upto getting it running in production.It offers valuable insight into the efficiency of the development process and identifying the possible areas of improvement. In general, shorter lead times indicates a smooth development process, while longer lead times suggest possible bottlenecks in the development process.

Failure Rate 

Failure rate or commonly referred to as mean time to failure is a key metric that will impact the overall project cost and timelines too. A lower failure rate of deployments means the process is being executed precisely and a higher rate indicates, there could be an issue to be attended to. An insight into key failure metrics like MTTR, MTBF, and MTTF.

SLA Compliance 

Most of the time, clients and the technology services providers agree with the SLA for the project. In almost all the projects this is a primary metric to be tracked, while doing a Devops implementation. A miss in SLA compliance could lead to serious financial and manpower losses not to forget the credibility loss.

Customer Issues Volume 

Not all defects are bad. However, more defects and regular defects are bad. Customer issues which are tracked in terms of the support tickets that the CRM creates is one of the key indicators of the performance. The trend in the ticket volume could be analysed to understand the genre of issues that the users are facing and then could be backtracked to the development process.

Unplanned Activities 

A successful project plan does not have any unplanned activity. It requires impeccable planning and smooth functioning of all the team members in cohesion for making this as a reality. Generally, the unplanned activity should be less than or equal to 25% of the total project time. Unplanned activity is also sometimes connected and dependent on the ticket volumes and ad-hoc issues that are reported.

Workflow and Responsibilities

The processes and plans need to be meticulously designed so that the workflow happens smoothly and each party understands their responsibility. As a key leader driving the project, ensuring a sense of autonomy within the team exists will go a long way.

Transparency 

DevOps was built on a foundation of being collaborative and transparent to all the functions and individuals involved. Setting realistic expectations between all the teams such as operations, development, and security will effectively drive the project to a successful conclusion and it will also enable all the team members to work towards a common goal.

Conclusion

These are some of the key suggested metrics that an organization could track to measure the success of the DevOps implementation program. The metrics and KPIs could vary and could be defined as per the size of the program and the organization itself, however, we believe this could be a good starting point.