A team shipped 200 production changes last quarter. Thirty-six of those changes needed a hotfix, rollback, or patch to restore normal service. Which DORA metric does this count describe?
Show answer and explanation
Answer: B
This is the change failure rate, the proportion of deployments that cause degraded service and require remediation. Thirty-six of 200 changes is 18 percent. The metric is a stability measure, so it captures quality of delivery rather than speed. Deployment frequency counts how often releases happen, lead time measures elapsed time from commit to production, and time to restore service measures how long recovery takes once a failure occurs. The metric is most useful when tracked over time alongside the other keys.
Why the other options are wrong
- A. Deployment frequency counts how often changes reach production. It says nothing about how many of those deployments failed, so it cannot be read from the failure counts given in the scenario.
- C. Lead time for changes measures elapsed time from commit to production. The scenario reports failures among deployments, not the duration between commit and release, so this metric does not match.
- D. Time to restore service measures how long recovery takes after a failure. The scenario counts how many changes needed remediation, which is a proportion rather than a duration.