> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.cortex.io/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Measure DORA progress

export const RecipeBadges = ({badges = []}) => {
  const map = {
    "recipe": {
      label: "Recipe",
      color: "#A86400"
    },
    "ai-excellence": {
      label: "AI excellence",
      color: "#653EE8"
    },
    "production-readiness": {
      label: "Production readiness",
      color: "#226686"
    },
    "incident-mgmt": {
      label: "Incident management",
      color: "#86198F"
    },
    "migrations": {
      label: "Migrations",
      color: "#0E7C66"
    },
    "compliance": {
      label: "Compliance",
      color: "#475569"
    },
    "dora": {
      label: "DORA metrics",
      color: "#1D4ED8"
    },
    "security": {
      label: "Security",
      color: "#B42318"
    },
    "operational-readiness": {
      label: "Operational readiness",
      color: "#B54708"
    },
    "dev-onboarding": {
      label: "Developer onboarding",
      color: "#C11574"
    }
  };
  const items = badges.map(key => map[key]).filter(Boolean);
  if (items.length === 0) return null;
  return <div className="not-prose flex flex-wrap gap-2 mb-6">
      {items.map(b => <span key={b.label} className="rounded-lg px-2 py-1 text-xs font-medium" style={{
    backgroundColor: b.color,
    color: b.textColor || "#FFFFFF"
  }}>
          {b.label}
        </span>)}
    </div>;
};

<RecipeBadges badges={["recipe", "dora"]} />

In Cortex, use Scorecards to measure progress against DORA benchmarks at your organization, and use the Eng Intelligence [DORA Dashboard](/improve/eng-intelligence/dora-dashboard) to see your metrics improve in realtime.

## DORA Metrics Scorecard example

In this example, assume that you have launched a DORA Metrics Scorecard based on the out-of-the-box template provided in Cortex.

<Accordion title="To launch this Scorecard">
  1. Click **Scorecards** from the main nav in Cortex.
  2. In the upper right corner, click **Create Scorecard**. In the `DORA Operational Readiness` template tile, click **Use**.

  <img src="https://mintcdn.com/cortex-290c0c42/qRY2zZcIyXqFVeCq/guides/images/click-dora.jpg?fit=max&auto=format&n=qRY2zZcIyXqFVeCq&q=85&s=05fb3ff99beb26c75559ffcecea2aa7e" alt="Click Create Scorecard, then select DORA Metrics." width="2000" height="1000" data-path="guides/images/click-dora.jpg" />
</Accordion>

### DORA performance levels

Cortex's DORA Scorecard template is based on the established DORA standards of performance.

### Scorecard rules

The Scorecard contains four levels: Minimum, Established, Accelerating, and Elite. Each level corresponds with increasingly higher performance against DORA standards.

<img src="https://mintcdn.com/cortex-290c0c42/qRY2zZcIyXqFVeCq/guides/images/dora-scorecard-img.jpg?fit=max&auto=format&n=qRY2zZcIyXqFVeCq&q=85&s=f6093fcdddfc56bfe978aed1a45ef6c1" alt="Each level in the DORA Scorecard contains rules that show success against DORA metric benchmarks." width="2000" height="1000" data-path="guides/images/dora-scorecard-img.jpg" />

Expand the tile below to learn about how the rules in each level give you insight into your team's performance.

<Accordion title="DORA Scorecard rules">
  The progress your team makes against these rules allows you to assess the agility, stability, and quality of your software delivery process.

  #### Minimum

  These rules help you establish a baseline of readiness to start measuring DORA metrics.

  * Logs are linked
  * Ownership is set
  * Version control (Git) is in place
  * Documentation is present

  #### Established

  These rules motivate your teams to achieve DORA's Medium-level benchmarks for key metrics.

  * MTTR is less than 12 hours
  * Deployment frequency is at least 2x/month
  * Lead time for changes less than 5 days
  * Change failure rate: \<30% of deployments are rollbacks
  * Basic monitoring in place
  * CI/CD pipeline configured

  #### Accelerating

  These rules motivate your teams to achieve DORA's High-level benchmarks for key metrics.

  * MTTR less than 4 hours
  * Deployment frequency is at least 6x/month
  * Lead time for changes less than 3 days
  * Change failure rate: \<20% of deployments are rollbacks
  * Metrics dashboard embedded
  * Pipeline success rate => 85%

  #### Elite

  These rules motivate your teams to achieve DORA's Elite-level benchmarks for key metrics.

  * MTTR less than 1 hour
  * Deployment frequency is 30+ per month
  * Lead time for changes is less than 1 day
  * Change failure rate: \<10% of deployments are rollbacks
  * SLOs are defined
  * Pipeline success rate => 95%
</Accordion>

### Understanding Scorecard levels

Assume the following for an entity:

* It's passing 3/4 rules in the Minimum level
  * It has logs linked, ownership set, and a version control integration configured (passing)
  * It does not have documentation linked (failing)
* It's passing all rules in the Established level

In this case, the entity would have **No Level**.

* It is failing the rule "Documentation is present" in the Minimum level. Because of this, it has not fully achieved the Minimum level, the first one that an entity can pass.
* Once the entity has documentation linked, it will achieve all rules in the Minimum level. Because it is already passing all rules required for the Established level, this means it will automatically achieve the Established level.

<Check>
  This kind of gamification motivates developers to not only progress through the levels, but to maintain the quality of their entities over time.
</Check>

### Driving continuous improvement against DORA benchmarks

Measuring your performance against DORA standards does not start and stop with launching a Scorecard. We recommend taking the steps described below to understand your baseline, motivate change, and continuously improve:

<Steps>
  <Step title="Measure baseline metrics">
    Measure your metrics in the [DORA Dashboard](/improve/eng-intelligence/dora-dashboard).
  </Step>

  <Step title="Investigate">
    Drill down into underlying data in [Data Explorer](/improve/eng-intelligence/data-explorer).
  </Step>

  <Step title="Take action">
    Codify expectations by launching a [Scorecard](/standardize/scorecards), allowing you to continuously evaluate entities against standards using live data from integrated tools.
  </Step>

  <Step title="Validate impact">
    Review your [DORA Dashboard](/improve/eng-intelligence/dora-dashboard) to see improved metrics, validating the impact of the DORA Metrics Scorecard.
  </Step>
</Steps>


## Related topics

- [Scorecards](/guides/product-areas/scorecards.md)
- [Create a Scorecard](/standardize/scorecards/create.md)
- [DORA Dashboard](/improve/eng-intelligence/dora-dashboard.md)