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Deployment Frequency
Definition: Deployment Frequency measures how often an organization successfully releases code to production. It is a direct measure of an engineering team's throughput and delivery cadence.
Why It Matters
Deployment Frequency is a key DORA metric that indicates the health and efficiency of a team's deployment pipeline and their ability to deliver value quickly.
Indicates Throughput: A higher deployment frequency means smaller, more manageable changes are being released, which reduces risk and speeds up feedback loops.
Reflects Pipeline Health: To deploy frequently, a team must have a high degree of confidence in their automated testing and CI/CD processes. A low frequency can signal underlying problems in the pipeline.
Enables Agility: High-performing teams deploy on-demand. This allows the business to respond rapidly to customer needs, run experiments, and pivot strategy without being constrained by a slow, rigid release schedule.
How to Measure It
Deployment Frequency is a straightforward count of successful deployments to production over a period of time.
Deployment Frequency = Count(Successful Production Deployments) / Time Period
For example, if a team has 20 successful deployments in a 10-day work week, their deployment frequency is 2 per day.
Interpretation & Benchmarks
Goal: The primary goal is to achieve a high and consistent Deployment Frequency. The ability to deploy on-demand is the gold standard.
Batch Size is Key: A high frequency is typically correlated with a small batch size. Shipping smaller changes is less risky and easier to debug if something goes wrong.
Industry Benchmarks (DORA):
Elite: On-demand (multiple deploys per day).
High: Between once per day and once per week.
Medium: Between once per week and once per month.
Low: Less than once per month.