Deployment frequency

Deployment frequency is calculated by looking at the total number of deployments that happened in a given time period.

Summary

Deployment frequency is one of the DORA metrics. It's the average number of deployments per week, over a given timeframe. It measures a team’s capability to move fast in practical terms: how long it takes to change something in production.

In Swarmia, we take the average of this number in a given time period and show the average number of deployments per day as the deployment frequency.

Example

Between Monday and Friday, there were 25 deployments. That gives us a deployment frequency of 25, and an average deployment frequency of 5 deployments per day.

Why it matters

Deployments are what makes work visible to the users, or in other words, what makes it possible for your work to deliver a business impact.

According to the authors of Accelerate, elite teams are able to deploy new code on-demand or multiple times per day, and the release frequency of high-performing teams is between once a day and once a week.

Benchmarks

• Great: Continuously ( ≥ 10 deployments per week)

• Good: Daily ( ≥ 5 deployments per week)

• Needs attention: Less than daily ( < 5 deployments per week)

How to use it

Monitoring your deployment frequency and tracking increases or decreases can help indicate certain issues in your system or process. For example, a low deployment frequency can indicate working with large batches or signal other problems, such as poor deployment infrastructure or lack of reliable automated tests.

Where to find it

You can find deployment frequency (as well as the other DORA metrics) under Infrastructure.