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Deployment Frequency

Deployment Frequency

Learn how to use the DORA Deployment Frequency metric to improve your pipeline workflow.

Updated over a week ago

Deployment Frequency

  1. What is Deployment Frequency

  2. Why Deployment Frequency Matters

  3. How Umano Measures Deployment Frequency

  4. How Umano Visualises Deployment Frequency

  5. What's included when calculating Deployment Frequency

  6. What good results for Deployment Frequency looks like

  7. Practices that influence and improve Deployment Frequency

  8. Tips to improve Deployment Frequency

  9. Common Anti-Patterns to Watch Out For When Using Deployment Frequency

1. What is Deployment Frequency?

Deployment Frequency measures how often a team successfully releases code into production or a staging environment. It reflects the pace at which teams deliver value to customers and respond to changes or issues. This metric is a key indicator of a team’s agility and efficiency in shipping updates, fixes, and new features.
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2. Why Deployment Frequency Matters

Frequent deployments enable teams to deliver value faster, reduce risk, and improve responsiveness to customer needs. High deployment frequency often correlates with smaller changes, which are easier to test, review, and roll back if needed. Teams that deploy frequently can iterate rapidly, fostering innovation and improving customer satisfaction.
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3. How Umano Measures Deployment Frequency

Deployment Frequency is measured by the total number of deployments in an interval, divided by the total number of working days in the interval. Builds created with tags are used to identify the deployments.

4. How Umano Visualises Deployment Frequency

5. What's Included in Umano's calculation for Deployment Frequency

  • Number of deployments

  • Number of working days in the interval

  • Number of builds per deployment

  • Number of issues per deployment

  • Build success rate per deployment

  • Time between deployments

  • Number of contributors per deployment

6. What Good Results for This Metric Look Like

  • Elite Performance: Deploying multiple times per day.

  • High Performance: Deploying once per day or multiple times per week.

  • Medium Performance: Deploying weekly to monthly.

  • Low Performance: Deploying less than once a month.

7. Practices That Influence and Improve This Metric

  • Adopt CI/CD: Implement Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery practices to automate and streamline deployment processes.

  • Feature Toggles: Use feature flags to safely release features without impacting end users.

  • Trunk-Based Development: Minimize long-lived branches to reduce merge conflicts and accelerate releases.

  • Automated Testing: Implement robust automated testing pipelines to ensure code quality and reduce manual intervention.

8. Tips to Improve Deployment Frequency

  • Start with smaller, incremental changes to reduce complexity.

  • Focus on automation to eliminate bottlenecks in the deployment pipeline.

  • Monitor and analyze deployment logs to identify delays and optimize the process.

  • Train your team on DevOps best practices and tools.

9. Common Anti-Patterns to Watch Out For When Using Deployment Frequency

  • Batching Large Changes: Waiting to deploy large batches of changes increases complexity and risk.

  • Manual Processes: Relying on manual steps in the pipeline slows down deployments.

  • Long-Lived Branches: Keeping branches open for extended periods creates merge conflicts and delays.

  • Insufficient Testing: Lack of automated testing leads to increased deployment failures.

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