Change failure rate
What is change failure rate?
Change failure rate is a measure used in software engineering to assess the stability and reliability of software after updates or new deployments. It calculates the percentage of all deployments that result in any kind of failure in the production environment. To determine the change failure rate, one divides the number of deployments that caused failures by the total number of deployments during a given period, then multiplies the result by 100 to get a percentage. This metric helps organizations understand how often their changes lead to issues, which can be critical for maintaining high levels of service and customer satisfaction.
Why is change failure rate important?
Risk mitigation. By tracking the change failure rate, teams can gauge the risk associated with each release. If the change failure rate is high, it signals that the deployment practices might be introducing too many errors, indicating a need for better testing or development processes. This helps in proactively managing risks and implementing corrective measures before issues escalate.
Resource allocation. A higher change failure rate often implies that more resources are spent on fixing issues rather than on new features or improvements. By reducing the change failure rate, organizations can free up valuable resources, which can then be redirected to further enhance the product, thus improving efficiency and productivity.
Customer trust and satisfaction. Frequent failures in production can tarnish a company's reputation and lead to customer dissatisfaction. Monitoring and striving to minimize the change failure rate is essential to maintain reliability and customer trust. This is particularly crucial in competitive markets where customers expect high availability and performance.
What are the limitations of change failure rate?
Does not indicate severity or impact. The change failure rate metric does not differentiate between the severity of the failures. A minor issue that has little impact on the users might be counted the same as a major outage. This can sometimes give a misleading impression of the actual impact of deployment failures on the business.
Historical data dependency. This metric relies heavily on historical data, and its accuracy is contingent on the quality of past records. Inaccurate or incomplete data can lead to incorrect assessments of the change failure rate, potentially leading organizations to make misguided decisions.
Not a standalone measure. Change failure rate should not be used in isolation to determine the health of software development and deployment practices. It needs to be considered in conjunction with other metrics to provide a comprehensive view of the development pipeline's effectiveness and efficiency.
Metrics related to change failure rate
Deployment frequency. Deployment frequency refers to how often new releases and updates are deployed to production. This metric is directly related to the change failure rate as increasing the number of deployments can potentially increase the chance of failures, if not managed properly. Conversely, a stable deployment frequency with a decreasing change failure rate could indicate improving quality and reliability in software releases.
Mean time to recovery. Mean time to recovery (MTTR) is the average time it takes to recover from a failure that occurs in production. This metric complements the change failure rate by providing insight into the team's ability to respond to and fix failures. A lower MTTR in conjunction with a low change failure rate can indicate high operational efficiency and robustness in production environments.
Deployment success rate. Deployment success rate is the inverse of change failure rate, representing the percentage of deployments that succeed without causing any failures in production. Monitoring both metrics together gives a balanced view of how effectively and safely new changes are being deployed, which is crucial for continuous improvement in deployment practices.
