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Unveiling The Power Of DORA Metrics: Transforming DevOps Workflows

Based on a Lightning Talk by: James Putman, Senior DevOps Engineer @ InRhythm on September 7th, 2023

Overview

In today’s fast-paced digital landscape, organizations are continually seeking ways to enhance their software delivery and operational performance. The DevOps methodology has revolutionized the way software is developed and deployed, fostering collaboration between development and operations teams. 

A crucial element in this journey is the adoption of DORA (DevOps Research and Assessment) metrics; in James Putman’s Lightning Talk session, we will delve into their valuable insights into the effectiveness of DevOps practices and associated aid in streamlining workflows:

  • Overview
  • A Comprehensive Look Into DORA Metrics
  • Best Practices For Implementing DORA Metrics
  • Enhancing DevOps Workflows With DORA Metrics
  • Closing Thoughts

A Comprehensive Look Into DORA Metrics

DORA metrics, developed by the DevOps Research and Assessment group, provide a comprehensive framework to assess an organization’s software delivery performance. These metrics are designed to gauge the efficiency, effectiveness, and overall impact of DevOps practices, enabling teams to identify areas of improvement and optimize their workflows. DORA metrics are divided into four key areas: Deployment Frequency, Lead Time for Changes, Mean Time to Recover, and Change Failure Rate.

  • Deployment Frequency

This metric measures the frequency at which an organization deploys its software. A higher deployment frequency indicates that teams are releasing updates more frequently, which can lead to faster feedback loops and quicker issue resolution.

  • Lead Time For Changes

This metric assesses the time it takes for a code change to be developed, tested, and deployed to production. A shorter lead time indicates that teams are efficiently moving code through the development pipeline.

  • Mean Time To Recover

MTTR measures the time it takes to recover from incidents or failures in the production environment. A lower MTTR implies that teams are adept at identifying and addressing issues promptly, ensuring minimal disruptions.

  • Change Failure Rate

This metric evaluates the percentage of deployments that result in failures. A lower change failure rate signifies that the organization has robust testing practices and a stable deployment process.

Best Practices For Implementing DORA Metrics

  • Define Clear Objectives

Clearly outline the goals you want to achieve with DORA metrics. Whether it’s reducing lead time, improving deployment frequency, or enhancing recovery times, having well-defined objectives is crucial.

  • Automate Data Collection

Automate the collection of metrics to ensure accuracy and consistency. Leveraging tools and platforms that integrate seamlessly with your DevOps processes can streamline data collection.

  • Continuous Monitoring

Regularly monitor DORA metrics to track your progress over time. This allows you to identify trends, patterns, and areas that require attention.

  • Collaborate Across Teams

DORA metrics encourage collaboration between development, operations, and other teams involved in the software delivery process. Collaborative efforts are essential to improving overall performance.

Enhancing DevOps Workflows With DORA Metrics

DORA metrics play a pivotal role in enhancing DevOps workflows by providing quantifiable insights that enable organizations to identify bottlenecks, streamline processes, and make data-driven decisions. When implemented effectively, DORA metrics can lead to:

  • Improved Delivery Speed

DORA metrics highlight areas where improvements can be made, ultimately speeding up the software delivery process.

  • Increased Stability

 By focusing on metrics like change failure rate and mean time to recover, organizations can enhance the stability of their production environments.

  • Data-Driven Decisions

DORA metrics empower teams to make informed decisions based on real-time data, rather than relying on assumptions or gut feelings.

  • Continuous Improvement

Regularly analyzing DORA metrics fosters a culture of continuous improvement, where teams are encouraged to optimize their practices over time.

Closing Thoughts

In today’s competitive digital landscape, organizations must continually strive to optimize their software delivery and operational performance. DORA metrics offer a comprehensive and objective way to assess DevOps practices, providing valuable insights that drive improvement. By focusing on deployment frequency, lead time for changes, mean time to recover, and change failure rate, organizations can enhance their DevOps workflows, improve delivery speed, and achieve a higher level of operational excellence. Embracing DORA metrics is not just a practice—it’s a transformative journey towards efficiency, collaboration, and success in the world of DevOps.

Comparing Angular 2 vs React vs Vue

InRhythm recently hosted our second Code Lounge, where I discussed the differences between Angular 2, React+Redux and Vue+Veux. The 60 attendees proved to be a solid sounding board for the discussion and below is a summary of my findings shared with the group.

Whenever I start a new project, I’m always faced with the challenging question: “what should I build it in”? Research is important, but sometimes it feels like comparing apples to oranges. How can you compare a library (React) to a framework (Angular)? I’ve found that the best approach is to build something simple in each one and compare the experience. To share with my fellow developers, I’ve built an application to compare existing JavaScript solutions – Angular 2, React+Redux and Vue+Veux.

For simplicity’s sake, I made a list of “blog articles”, with create, read, update, and delete (CRUD) functionality to create more of an “apples-to-apples” comparison. Please note that my opinions are based on working with the three tech stacks for a few weeks and I respect any differing opinions of other developers on this subject.

Comparison Summary

Angular2

PROS CONS
  • A complete solution
  • Class syntax: makes the code very well organized
  • TypeScript

 

 

 

 

 

 
  • Too much has changed
  • Very steep learning curve
  • It’s not plain JS: difficult to migrate to other frameworks or upgrade to Angular2
  • Somewhat verbose: every file needs tons of import statements
  • Angular2 syntax: not as simple as Angular1. ng-____ was so much simpler.
  • TypeScript
  • Errors aren’t helpful at all
  • Huge build: Angular2’s production build is 3 to 5 times as big as the other solutions!

Honestly, the more I work with other solutions, the harder it gets to say a lot of positive things about Angular2. A complete solution initially seems like a huge benefit, but then you are then required to use everything they recommend, nothing more, nothing less. Similarly, TypeScript feels like a plus with it’s strong types, error checking, and clear interfaces, but is difficult to learn to set up. There seem to be few resources out there to show you how to add typings to your project, and not all IDE’s seem to support it well.

Far too much changed between Angular1 and 2. The HTML templating syntax was the least of it. They added TypeScript, both SystemJS and Webpack, Rx.js, and replaced promises with observables and the learning curve is very heavy. Also, because Angular has it’s own special version of everything (e.g. $http, $q, etc) it is extremely difficult to migrate existing projects. Everything needs to be rewritten.

React+Redux

PROS CONS
  • Mobile
  • Server-side rendering
  • Immutable Data
  • Complexity
  • No standard technologies
  • JSX syntax: can be complicated. It’s far simpler to use HTML and Angular1 or Vue syntax

React seems to have a few very clear advantages. If you need to make a mobile app, or if search engine optimization (SEO) is a high priority, React has the oldest and most mature solutions.

Implementing delete operation for our CRUD app was by far the most complex in React+Redux, requiring 13 pieces of code strewn across 7 files. Standardization is also a challenge. While Angular is strict with it’s recommendations, React is loose. Some developers feel it is better to have more choices, but I feel the opposite. React technologies seem to change often. Flux has been replaced by Redux. Redux seems like it’s going to be replaced by MobX. The examples I found used Thunks. I’m told that Saga is a better (and more complicated) solution. Researching, learning, comparing, and vetting the myriad choices is very time consuming. Especially in a large corporation with many teams in many countries, standardization (having a “right way”) would be a huge time saver.

Vue+Vuex

PROS CONS
  • Angular1’s syntax: v-for, v-if, v-model, v-class, etc
  • React’s speed and size
  • Redux’s state management: single store, immutable state
  • Great CLI: Vue, router, Webpack, HMR, eslint, tests
  • Simplicity
  • Recommendations but not too opinionated: Angular2 often seems too rigid while React has the opposite extreme: you need to figure out all the pieces you want to use for your solution. Vue seems to take the middle road: it recommends a complete solution but ultimately lets you pick the pieces you want to use. Better yet, you can scaffold out a new project with a single line in the terminal.
  • Code style: linting rules are a little weird. It prefers no semicolons and adds spaces in some weird places.
  • No classes: I liked Angular2’s classes, but I guess I can live without them

 

 

 

 

 

It appears to me that someone compiled the best parts of the competing solutions!

Numerical Comparison

Size and speed (load + render time) of built code

Angular2 is by far the largest. React+Redux and Vue+Vuex are similar.

  • Angular2: 1,500 kb, 1.5 seconds!
  • React+Redux: 200 kb, 0.6 seconds
  • Vue+Vuex: 400 kb, 0.6 seconds

Complexity of adding delete functionality to our CRUD app

React was by far the most complicated. Angular2 and Vue+Vuex are similar.

  • Angular2: 3 blocks of code in 3 files
  • React+Redux: 13 blocks of code in 7 files!
  • Vue+Vuex: 3 blocks of code in 3 files

Installing Dependencies and Running the Projects

You will need to install and then run all 3 of the following to try the different solutions.

Server

This is a simple Express server for our articles api to which we can make get, post, put, and delete requests.

Run the following:

cd server-api && npm install && npm start

Angular2

The original code was taken from the Angular2 “Tour of Heroes” app in the official documentation: I modified the code into a simple CRUD form for a blog and swapped SystemJS for Angular2 Webpack.

Run the following:

cd angular2 && npm install typescript tslint -g && npm install && npm start

 

Build:

 npm install http-server -g && npm run build http-server ./dist

React+Redux

The original code was taken from the best React+Redux tutorial I could find: “Building Applications with React and Redux in ES6” by Cory House (Corey’s very good. I highly recommend you watch it.) Once again, I changed it into a simple CRUD form for a blog.

Run the following:

cd react-redux && npm install && npm start

 

Build:

npm run build

Vue.js+Vuex

Vue CLI’s command “vue init webpack PROJECT_NAME” was used. Then I built the CRUD app from scratch.

Run the following:

cd vue-vuex && npm install && npm start

 

Build:

npm run build http-server ./dist

 

Learning More

There’s a lot to learn with each solution! Please click here to review more resources and tips around this subject.

Engineering Driven Culture – InRhythm’s Code Lounge

 

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Last week, driven by the feedback from our engineering leadership team, we held InRhythm U’s first-ever Code Lounge, inviting everyone from across the company and a few external guests to learn new skills, brush up on existing ones, or just get help on a personal project.

Code Lounge featured technical “stations” for Angular, React, React Native, Express, Vue, Node.js, Java, QA, UX and Product, each led by an InRhythm senior developer instructor. Accompanied by food and drinks on the company, the event provided an easy atmosphere and low-key way for everyone to network and learn a thing or two!

Here are a few key takeaways and learnings from Code Lounge:

  1. To understand what is important to our engineers, we need to be constantly listening to and engaging with our teams. While Vue and Java were not on our list of station offerings originally, in putting the event together we quickly found out that they are in high demand. Luckily, we were able to add both of these to our agenda, thanks to our very talented engineers who were able to lead these discussions.
  2. Collaboration happens when culture is driven from bottom up, not top down. Our engineers and UX/product leads single-handedly drove Code Lounge, with management simply enabling from the background with budget and logistics support. The magic of the night was the true collaboration seen across the stations, individuals coming prepared with best practices in their domains to share without being asked, and amazing learning and teaching happening in tandem across the room.
  3. Angular seemed to be the least popular station at the event, perhaps because a large part of our team is already fluent in Angular or perhaps due to newer technologies featured, such as Vue and React – these were the most popular and buzzed-about tables.
  4. We love learning and development at InRhythm, but admittedly beer on tap, Lombardi’s pizza, pool and music make it even better.

At InRhythm, our goal is to give our people the best opportunities for learning and growth. This goal is something I feel very passionate about as do all our senior leaders across the organization. Code Lounge is just one example of how we keep our company culture and ourselves at the top of our game!  If you want to find out more, visit us at www.inrhythm.com.

 

Bar Raisers Bootcamp in Phoenix

InRhythm CEO, Gunjan Doshi, recently completed a Bar Raisers Training Bootcamp at client site in Phoenix, AZ. Bar Raisers are the people who are able to transform any team they join with passion, drive, and the innate ability to influence those around them to achieve new heights. #BarRaisers bootcamp outlines and identifies actionable steps for companies to recognize and hire top-notch talent!