Accelerate
The authors of Accelerate have researched and provided what they call ‘the key capabilities that make software organizations better’.
Types of organizations
The four key metrics for a software delivery organization
What defines high performance in technology organizations. It comes down to four key metrics:
Speed
Delivery Lead Time: shorter is better - Code commit to production from requirement
Deployment Frequency: higher is better - How often is code pushed to production
Stability
Mean Time To Restore (MTTR): shorter is better - Mean time to recovery when service is down
Change Fail Percentage: Lower Is Better - Rate of deployment failures in production that requires a rollback
There are 24 key capabilities that have a proven impact on the performance of software delivery. These are divided into 5 categories:
Continuous delivery
Architecture
Product and process
Lean management and monitoring
Culture
There are 24 capabilities that have an impact on the organization
Continuous delivery
1 Version control: application code as well as infrastructure configuration
2 Deployment automation
3 Continuous integration
4 Trunk-based development over long-lived feature branches
5 Test automation: reliable, easy to act on, and executed frequently
6 Test data management: better test automation with adequate data
7 Shift left on security
8 Continuous delivery implementation by adapting teams, processes, and architecture
Architecture
9 Loosely-coupled architecture
10 Autonomous teams with decision-making authority (empowered teams)
Product and process
11 Seek customer feedback and incorporate that in the design of products
12 Value stream: understand the flow of work from business to customer
13 Working in small batches including the use of minimum viable products
14 Experiments and having authority to make changes without approval
Lean management and monitoring
15 Lightweight change approval process (a heavy process is worse than having no process at all)
16 Monitoring
17 Pro-active notifications
18 Limit the amount of work-in-progress
19 Visualise work
Culture
20 A generative culture of joint performance and transparency
22 Strong collaboration between teams
23 High employee satisfaction