{"id":12232,"date":"2023-06-23T09:36:28","date_gmt":"2023-06-23T08:36:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ee.yelkdev.site\/?p=12232"},"modified":"2024-12-09T23:44:38","modified_gmt":"2024-12-09T23:44:38","slug":"how-to-win-at-delivery-assurance-with-dora-metrics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.equalexperts.com\/blog\/our-thinking\/how-to-win-at-delivery-assurance-with-dora-metrics\/","title":{"rendered":"How to win at delivery assurance with DORA metrics"},"content":{"rendered":"

I speak with customers and consultants across the Equal Experts network<\/a>, to help our customers solve scaling problems and achieve business agility. One topic that often comes up is delivery assurance, and it\u2019s easy to get it wrong. Our preference is to automate and visualise the DORA<\/a> metrics in a services portal, and use trends to identify assurance needs.<\/p>\n

Delivery assurance is about identifying risks, generating insights, and implementing corrective actions, so your delivery teams can deliver business outcomes on time and to a high standard. And it\u2019s challenging when teams are remote-first, in different offices, and\/or in different timezones.<\/p>\n

The easiest way to get delivery assurance wrong is to measure the wrong thing. Code coverage, story points, and velocity are good examples. They\u2019re easy to implement (which might explain their popularity), but they\u2019re team outputs rather than value stream outcomes. They\u2019re unrelated to user value, offer limited data, and can be gamed by teams incentivised to over-report progress. People change how they behave based on how they\u2019re measured.<\/p>\n

At Equal Experts, our delivery assurance advice is the same whether you\u2019ve got 1, 10, or 100 teams:<\/p>\n

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  1. Automate the DORA<\/a> metrics<\/li>\n
  2. Visualise the data in a services portal<\/li>\n
  3. Use trends to identify assurance needs<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    I once worked in a UK government department with 60 teams in 4 offices. In a meeting, I asked senior managers to write down which teams they were concerned about, and then showed them a new services portal with the DORA metrics. The data highlighted two teams quietly trending downwards, which nobody had written down. Corrective actions were adopted by the teams, and the customer was delighted with our delivery assurance. This is covered in-depth in a public conference talk, which you can see here.<\/p>\n