What is Deployment Frequency?

Deployment Frequency (DF) is a core DevOps metric and, more broadly, a core Agile delivery metric. As the name suggests, it tracks the frequency with which increments of code are deployed to staging, testing and production.

As the core objective of Agile software delivery is ‘..the early and continuous delivery of valuable software..’, Deployment Frequency is a core Agile metric and represents a core objective of effective DevOps. DF is also one of the four DORA metrics popularised by the DevOps Research and Assessments (DORA) group.

The software delivery process should be seen as an end-to-end value delivery process. As such, DF is best viewed alongside a broader range of agile delivery metrics measuring value delivery, delivery efficiency, dependability, backlog health, delivery and engineering quality, and DevOps processes.

Deployment Frequency | Plandek Dashboard

The calculation of Deployment Frequency requires surfacing data from CI/CD tools (e.g. Jenkins, CircleCI). This is typically done via reporting plug-ins to such tools or via an end-to-end delivery metrics dashboard like Plandek.

Analysis of Deployment Frequency – Breakdown and Filtering Options

Delivery metrics dashboards like Plandek enable you to analyse delivery, engineering and DevOps metrics in a number of different ways.

For example, you can analyse the frequency of deployments by branch, portfolio, program, repository or team. As such, targets can be set, and practical actions are taken to increase deployment frequency.

Deployment Frequency Drill-down | Plandek Dashboard

Related metrics

Deployment Frequency is one of many DevOps metrics, as well as being a broader Agile delivery metric. As such, it is often used as part of a ‘balanced scorecard’ of Agile delivery and DevOps metrics surfaced in real-time.

The DORA metrics often closely associated with Deployment Frequency are:

• Lead Time for Changes
• Mean Time to Recover (MTTR)
• Change Failure Rate (CFR)

Key use cases

Deployment Frequency is a key DevOps metric to ensure software is delivered early and often. Much emphasis might be placed on tracking and improving development-oriented metrics such as Cycle Time and Throughput. However, the acid test is that the software developed by the engineering team is regularly deployed to live (otherwise, all that effort is wasted). Hence, Deployment Frequency is not only a critical DevOps metric but also a critical broader Agile delivery metric.

It should, therefore, form a part of a wider group of Agile software delivery metrics tracked over time at team and programme levels.

Deployment Frequency is particularly important for:

• Organisations new to Agile software delivery looking to increase their Agile DevOps maturity – installing Agile DevOps tooling and establishing DevOps as an organisational entity.
• Organisations with a history of large and infrequent deployments want to increase their agility.

Expected outcomes

A high level of Deployment Frequency is a core Agile software delivery objective – as it ensures the delivery of value ‘early and often’.

Inexperienced Agile teams may have a very low DF (e.g. bi-annual, quarterly or monthly deployments). Mature Agile DevOps organisations have successfully increased their DF to daily deployments.

Experience shows that high-frequency deployments deliver value more rapidly over the long term for three reasons:

• The smaller and regular release size means it is easier to test, deploy and roll back if it fails – so the Change Failure Rate and Mean Time to Recover fall while availability rises.
• Regular releases enable a more effective customer feedback loop so that developers can respond to customer needs more rapidly and reduce time spent building unwanted features.
• Engineers feel closer to the customer and, hence, work more effectively.