DORA: the four keys, explained

Throughput and stability, paired. Plus how DORA relates to DX Core 4 and SPACE.

Oliver Wakefield-Smith

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

Updated 21 Jun 2026

Direct answer

DORA tracks four metrics: Deployment Frequency, Lead Time for Changes, Change Failure Rate, and Mean Time to Restore DORA Four Keys2024. The first two measure throughput; the last two measure stability. Elite teams optimise both pairs simultaneouslyDORA Research2024.

The throughput pair

Deployment Frequency

How often production receives a change. Elite teams ship on-demand (many times per day); medium teams weekly to monthly. See the DF calculator.

Lead Time for Changes

Time from first commit to production-ready. Measures CI pipeline efficiency and review-cycle discipline. LTC calculator.

The stability pair

Change Failure Rate

The share of deploys causing a failure. The metric this site is built around.

Mean Time to Restore

Time from incident detection to service restoration. Elite teams restore in under one hour. MTTR calculator.

How DORA relates to DX Core 4 and SPACE

DX Core 4 (Noda, 2024) layers DXI survey data and AI Measurement over the DORA backboneDX Core 42024. SPACE (Forsgren, Storey, Maddila et al, 2021) adds qualitative dimensions: Satisfaction, Performance, Activity, Communication, EfficiencySPACE (ACM Queue 2021)2021. DORA covers the quantitative system signals; SPACE adds the human dimensions; Core 4 marries them with an AI layer.