Operational
Change Failure Rate
Change Failure Rate measures the percentage of changes deployed to a production environment that subsequently fail, requiring hotfixes, rollbacks, or patches. This metric is vital for assessing the reliability and quality of software updates and deployments.
HOW TO MEASURE
Change Failure Rate is calculated by dividing the number of failed deployments by the total number of deployments over a specific period and expressing this as a percentage. It provides insight into the stability and risk associated with the release process.
HOW TO IMPROVE
Implement Robust Testing: Increase the use of automated testing frameworks to catch issues early in the development cycle.
Enhance Review Processes: Employ code reviews and peer checks before changes are merged into the main codebase.
Use Canary Releases and Blue/Green Deployments: Gradually roll out changes to a small subset of users to ensure stability before full deployment.
Post-Mortem Analysis: Conduct thorough analyses after each failure to understand root causes and prevent recurrence.
Strengthen Collaboration Between Teams: Foster a DevOps culture that enhances communication and responsibility sharing between development and operations teams.
FORMULA
Change Failure Rate=( Number of Failed Deployments/Total Number of Deployments)×100%
EXAMPLE
If a software team conducts 100 deployments in a month, and 3 of those deployments result in failures that require immediate remedial action, the Change Failure Rate would be: (3/100)×100%=3%
DEPARTMENT USAGE
Operations: Directly affected by deployment success and works to optimize deployment strategies.
Engineering/Development: Uses insights from deployment outcomes to improve code quality and deployment practices.
Quality Assurance: Ensures that releases meet quality standards before deployment.
Leadership: Monitors overall product health and operational risk.
Change Failure Rate is a crucial metric for any software development organization looking to minimize disruption and enhance the reliability of their software products. It helps teams refine their development and deployment processes to reduce the incidence of failures and improve overall system stability.
View the collection of Metrics Workshops.