Deploy Frequency Metric

Definition

The Deploy Frequency Metric is the total number of deployments to production in a given period.

Why is This Metric Useful?

• Indicates how often teams deliver value to end users.
• A high number of deployments indicates short cycle times. Teams deploying frequently show that they have confidence in pushing value and fixing issues quickly. High-performing teams invest in foundations that allow them to deploy multiple times a day and quickly recover from failures

How to Use it?

• Track deploy frequency to improve delivery pipelines.

Examples for Context

• Frequent deployments reduced feature delivery lead times.

Data Sources

• Deployment logs.

Calculation

• The number of unique release tags, according to your Git provider, divided by the number of days within the specified period of the iteration.

Tunable Configurations

• Definition of "production deployment".

Benchmarking Guidance

• High-performing teams deploy multiple times per day.

Error Margins and Limitations

• Includes partial or rollback deployments, which may not reflect new value delivery.

Stakeholder Use Cases

• DevOps: Optimize CI/CD pipelines.
• Managers:
  • Measure end-user delivery rates.
  • Improve automated test coverage.
  • Integrate CI/CD tools.
  • Automate the release validation phase and release process.
  • Reduce the error recovery time on production