What is Build Success Rate?
Why Build Success Rate Matters
How Umano Measures Build Success Rate
How Umano Visualises Build Success Rate
What's included when calculating Build Success Rate
What good results for Build Success Rate looks like
Practices that influence and improve Build Success Rate
Tips to improve Build Success Rate
Common Anti Patterns to watch out for
1. What is Build Success Rate?
Otherwise referred to as 'Change Failure Rate', Build Success Rate measures the percentage of builds that pass all stages of the CI/CD pipeline without failure. It reflects the reliability and stability of the build process.
2. Why Build Success Rate Matters
A high Build Success Rate indicates a stable and predictable development pipeline. Frequent build failures disrupt workflows, slow down delivery, and reduce team confidence. Maintaining a healthy success rate fosters a culture of reliability and trust.
3. How Umano Measures Build Success Rate
The build success rate is the median percentage of builds passed compared to the total number of builds triggered per repository per interval. Only passed (successful) and failed builds are considered for calculations; paused, pending, and stopped builds are excluded.
4. How Umano Visualises Build Success Rate
5. What's included when calculating Build Success Rate
Total number of builds
Total number of passed builds
Total number of failed builds
Number of commits per build
Number of issues addressed per build
6. What Good Results for This Metric Look Like
Elite Performance: Greater than 95%.
High Performance: Between 85% and 95%.
Medium Performance: Between 70% and 85%.
Low Performance: Less than 70%.
7. Practices That Influence and Improve This Metric
Code Quality Standards: Enforce best practices to prevent common errors.
Pre-Commit Hooks: Catch issues early with automated checks before committing.
Comprehensive Testing: Ensure all critical paths are covered by tests.
Pipeline Stability: Regularly update dependencies and monitor for flaky tests.
8. Tips to Improve Build Success Rate
Address flaky tests promptly to avoid false negatives.
Use version-controlled pipeline configurations to maintain consistency.
Encourage developers to run local tests before pushing code.
Perform post-mortems on failed builds to identify root causes.
9. Common Anti-patterns to Watch Out For when using Build Success Rate
Flaky Tests: Tests that intermittently fail cause false negatives and disrupt workflows.
Overlooking Dependency Updates: Outdated libraries or tools often lead to build failures.
Ignoring Build Logs: Failing to analyze logs delays troubleshooting and fixes.
Unmaintained Test Suites: Tests that are not updated with code changes result in inaccurate results.