What are DORA metrics — and why do they matter for Salesforce teams?

If you’ve spent time around Salesforce DevOps, you might have heard people talking about key metrics, especially DORA metrics. They’re frequently mentioned in discussions about deployment frequency, performance benchmarks, or DevOps maturity. But what exactly are these metrics, and how are they relevant to Salesforce teams?

To find out how development teams across the ecosystem are measuring their performance using DORA — and what sets top performers apart — download the latest State of Salesforce DevOps 2025 report. It’s packed with original research, real-world examples, and practical takeaways for anyone working in Salesforce delivery.

This article introduces the DORA metrics framework and explains why it has become such a valuable tool for assessing and improving DevOps performance — even in Salesforce’s unique development environment.

The key metrics explained

DORA stands for DevOps Research and Assessment, a research program by Google Cloud. Based on extensive industry data, the DORA team identified four key metrics that reliably indicate the performance of software delivery teams — which includes a better understanding of their org and its performance. These metrics fall into two categories:

Throughput

• Deployment frequency: How often the team releases to production a production environment.
• Lead time for changes: The time from the first code commit or change ticket to deploying it to production.

Stability

• Change failure rate: The percentage of deployments that result in a bug, error, or issue requiring remediation.
• Mean time to recover (MTTR): How long it takes to restore service from a system failure or production failure.

Together, these four metrics allow teams to quantify their performance across two essential dimensions: the speed at which they deliver and the reliability of that delivery

A fifth metric for Salesforce teams

While the original DORA framework includes four metrics, many Salesforce teams also monitor deployment time: the time it takes to move metadata between environments (e.g., from a developer sandbox to UAT).

Although this overlaps with change lead time, deployment time focuses specifically on the often time-consuming step of deploying between Salesforce orgs — a critical factor in overall efficiency.

Given the platform’s reliance on metadata and declarative development, monitoring this additional metric provides Salesforce teams with deeper visibility into where time is being spent and where processes can be improved.

Why DORA metrics matter for Salesforce DevOps

Salesforce app development introduces a number of platform-specific complexities — such as metadata deployments, sandbox environments, and limited support for traditional testing frameworks — which can make implementing DevOps more challenging.

However, the DORA metrics remain highly relevant. They provide a consistent, platform-agnostic framework for evaluating how well a team is delivering changes, whether it's custom code, declarative configurations, or metadata.

The latest State of Salesforce DevOps 2025 report highlights the growing adoption of DORA metrics across the Salesforce ecosystem. As Nathen Harvey, DORA Lead at Google Cloud, notes:

“Applying DORA’s insights to Salesforce deployments can lead to better organizational performance and improved well-being for people working in those organizations.”

Salesforce teams that track and improve these metrics often report faster releases, improved collaboration, and fewer deployment-related issues.

Using DORA metrics provides several tangible benefits, especially for Salesforce professionals seeking to improve deployment and delivery processes and demonstrate the impact of DevOps initiatives. These include:

• Performance benchmarking: Understand how your team compares to high-performing peers across key indicators
• Process improvement: Identify specific areas where bottlenecks, delays, or instability are affecting outcomes
• Strategic decision-making: Inform tooling, workflow, and testing decisions with data, not assumptions
• Cultural alignment: Create a culture of continuous improvement and collaboration by focusing on shared outcomes

Importantly, DORA metrics are not just for developers. Admins, architects, and release managers can all use them to gain insight into delivery practices and contribute to performance gains across the entire release pipeline.

TL;DR: DORA = DevOps confidence

The DORA metrics provide a clear, structured way to measure DevOps performance. For Salesforce teams, they offer a practical lens through which to assess delivery speed, stability, and improvement over time. Whether your team is just beginning its DevOps journey or looking to refine mature processes, DORA metrics serve as a reliable guide for getting better — and staying better.

Want to dig deeper?

If you’re new to DevOps measurement or want to explore how to implement these metrics within your team, the DevOps Launchpad course, Assessing and improving DevOps performance, offers practical, hands-on guidance tailored for Salesforce professionals.

Additionally, the State of Salesforce DevOps 2025 report offers detailed insights into how real-world Salesforce teams are applying DORA metrics, where performance is improving, and what top performers are doing differently.