Deployment frequency
Deployment frequency is the rate at which a team deploys to production. It is the first of the four DORA metrics (alongside lead time for changes, mean time to restore, and change failure rate) and the most-cited single number in the DORA Accelerate Reports. DORA's published quartile thresholds: elite = on demand (multiple per day); high = between once per week and once per month; medium = between once per month and once every six months; low = less than once every six months.
Deployment frequency is the single metric most often gamed in the wild, because increasing it appears (correctly) to be the easiest of the four to move. The DORA framework intentionally pairs it with change failure rate and MTTR — high frequency without low change-failure-rate is just shipping bugs faster. The 2024 DORA report shows elite-quartile deployment frequency converging on 'multiple deploys per day' for most large organisations that have invested in CI/CD; the broader population is more bimodal, with a long tail of teams deploying monthly or quarterly. Note that DORA explicitly does not claim causation between deployment frequency and business outcomes — it observes correlation with elite-quartile organisational performance.
Related terms
- Four key metrics
The four key metrics are the DORA framework for measuring software-delivery performance: deployment frequency, lead time for changes, mean time to restore, and change failure rate.
- Lead time
Lead time is the elapsed time from when work is requested (story created, ticket filed) to when it's delivered (deployed to production).
- Change failure rate
Change failure rate (CFR) is the percentage of deployments that cause a degradation in service requiring remediation (a hotfix, rollback, or patch).