Change failure rate by team size

The Series-C reference cohort, the coordination-cost inflection, and how to benchmark a 150-400-dev org.

Oliver Wakefield-Smith

Founder, Digital Signet. Built siemcost / monitoringcost / itbudgetcalculator.

Updated 21 Jun 2026

Direct answer

CFR rises modestly with engineering org size in the DORA cohort, with a notable inflection around 200-500 engineers as coordination overhead starts to dominate DORA 2024 Report2024. A 150-400-dev Series-C team sitting at 10-15% CFR is roughly median for its band.

The cohort cuts

DORA publishes org-size cuts in the <20 / 20-99 / 100-499 / 500-1,999 / 2,000+ ranges. The 100-499 cohort, which captures most Series-C orgs, clusters in the 8-18% CFR bandDORA 20242024.

The platform team confound

Organisations with dedicated platform teams report lower CFR than those without, controlling for size. This is the single largest within-cohort moderator. Platform-team investment shows up in CFR before it shows up in deploy frequency.

How to benchmark

Pick your org-size band, look at the median and the 75th percentile for that band, and benchmark against both. Outperforming the median is realistic; matching the 75th percentile requires sustained investment in CI safety and rollback automation.