Metric Mischief: An Amusing Adventure in the DevOps Universe | DevOps Experience 2023
It’s been more than a decade since the term DevOps has become popular. As of today, there is probably not a single IT organization who has not embraced DevOps in some form or fashion. One question is often asked by business and senior leaders: “What should we measure to know if we are doing well?” The world of DevOps metrics can be both perplexing and amusing. There are many metrics sets, measurement techniques and frameworks that have been documented over the years – DORA metrics, Flow metrics, SRE metrics, DevOps maturity models etc., to name a few. But large enterprises still struggle to establish a uniform set of metrics to measure their “DevOps Success” across all teams.
In this session, I will explore the confusing side of DevOps metrics, acknowledging the inherent short-comings and occasional misadventures that arise along the way. Through entertaining anecdotes and relatable stories, I will showcase the challenges faced by all when trying to make sense of elusive data points, bewildering performance indicators and unexpected correlations that can turn out to be erroneous.
I will also add a few additional measurements that can be used in conjunction with, or in place of, the existing ones. I will discuss some key metrics that matter in the DevOps context, and how they can be aligned with overall objectives to drive success. Moreover, I will emphasize the importance of contextualizing metrics within the broader organizational and cultural context, avoiding the pitfalls of vanity metrics and focusing on meaningful, actionable measurements.
