> For the complete documentation index, see [llms.txt](https://docs.cortex.io/llms.txt). Markdown versions of documentation pages are available by appending `.md` to page URLs; this page is available as [Markdown](https://docs.cortex.io/solutions/drive-framework/the-drive-pillars.md).

# The DRIVE pillars

DRIVE covers five dimensions of engineering health. Together, they give a complete picture of how an engineering organization is performing, not just how fast it's generating code.

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### **Delivery**

Are we shipping fast, and is it sustainable?

*Critical metrics: deploy frequency, lead time for changes, on-call pager volume*
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### **Reliability**

Are we delivering on our promises to customers?

*Critical metrics: Functional SLO status (binary pass/fail), Sev0 and Sev1 incident count*
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### **Initiatives**

Are our most important eng investments making progress?

*Critical metrics: tier 1 initiative milestone completion rate, OpEx action item completion rate*
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### **Vigilance**

Is security risk accumulating?

*Critical metrics: open critical and high fixable CVEs, assets below the minimum compliance security bar, orphaned assets*
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### **Efficiency**

Are we spending time and money effectively?

*Critical metrics: cloud spend versus budget, internal AI and LLM token costs, percentage of capacity spent on innovation*
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## How Cortex operationalizes DRIVE

Cortex gives you three surfaces for DRIVE:

* **Data ingestion** - Connect integrations and push custom metrics aligned to each DRIVE pillar, like deploy frequency, incident counts, initiative completion rates, vulnerability data, and AI spend. 
* **Scorecard** - A DRIVE Framework Scorecard template you can alter to match your organization's standards. Rules evaluate automatically against live data, without manual data entry or stale reports
* **Eng Intelligence dashboards** - Visualize your DRIVE metrics in custom dashboards for leadership reviews and trend tracking.

### Connect your data 

Ingest your services and infrastructure and connect integrations for version control, deploys, incidents, security scanning, and cloud cost data. For signals that don't come from a native integration (initiative completion rates, internal cost systems, custom deploy pipelines, etc) push that data into Cortex as custom metrics via the API. See [Setting up custom data for DRIVE](/solutions/drive-framework/setting-up-custom-data-for-drive.md)

### Configure the DRIVE Scorecard

Start from the DRIVE Framework Scorecard template and adjust thresholds to match your organization's standards. The default rules are a strong starting point for most teams. You can reference both integration and custom metrics in your Scorecard rules. See [DRIVE Scorecard rules](/solutions/drive-framework/drive-scorecard-rules.md)

### Build your Eng Intelligence dashboards

Use Eng Intelligence to build custom dashboards that visualize your DRIVE metrics. These give leaders a live view of organizational health going into every OpEx review. See [Building a custom DRIVE dashboard](/solutions/drive-framework/building-a-custom-drive-dashboard.md)

### Run your OpEx reviews against live data

Use the Scorecard and dashboards as the backbone of your recurring engineering leadership reviews. Bronze/Silver/Gold levels give leaders an instant read on which teams need attention, without having to dig through raw metrics.

## Next steps

**Not sure where to start? Take the DRIVE maturity assessment**

The [DRIVE maturity assessment](https://cortex.io/drive/assessment) takes 5 minutes and gives you a breakdown of your org's strengths, risk areas, and the highest-impact gaps to close.

<div align="center" data-with-frame="true"><figure><img src="/files/QodCYNHEULaEUt3fSl7q" alt="" width="375"><figcaption></figcaption></figure></div>

**Ready to set up DRIVE in Cortex?**

[Start here](/solutions/drive-framework/setting-up-custom-data-for-drive.md) by importing your services and connecting your integrations, then create a Scorecard using the DRIVE Framework template. Adjust the thresholds to match your organization's standards, and you'll have live DRIVE data in your next leadership review.