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Change Failure Rate

The percentage of changes to production that result in a failure (e.g., service outage, degraded performance) and require a rollback or hotfix.

Categorydev

Overview

Change Failure Rate is one of the four key DORA metrics. It measures the quality of the release process. A high rate suggests that the testing and validation stages of the pipeline are insufficient.

Calculation

Change Failure Rate = (Number of failed changes) / (Total number of changes)

How to Improve

  • Automated Testing: Increase coverage and reliability of tests.
  • Smaller Changes: Reduce the complexity and risk of each deployment.
  • Better Staging Environments: Ensure staging closely matches production.

Related Terms

DORA MetricsDeployment FrequencyLead Time for Changes