Delivery
- Deployment frequency (DORA)
- Lead time for changes (DORA)
- Cycle time from first commit to production
Quality
- Change failure rate (DORA)
- Escaped defects per release
- Test coverage on critical paths (not overall)
Reliability
- Mean time to recovery / MTTR (DORA)
- SLO attainment on top 3 user journeys
- Incident count by severity
Team health
- eNPS or pulse score
- On-call pages outside business hours
- Time spent on planned work vs. unplanned
Common pitfalls
- — Tracking lines of code, story points, or PR count. Activity metrics make people game them.
- — Watching the dashboard without ever changing the operating model in response.
- — Comparing teams to each other. Compare a team to its own trend line.