DORA metrics from GitLab, automatically
Deployment frequency, lead time for changes, change failure rate, and time to restore — computed continuously from your GitLab pipelines and merge requests. No spreadsheets, no scripts to maintain, no definition debates.
14-day free trial · No credit card · Read-only GitLab access
Computed from GitLab pipelines and deployments with read-only access, benchmarked against the DORA bands.
- Lead time for changes
- 18h Elite
- Change failure rate
- 9.1% High
- Time to restore
- 52m Elite
The four keys
The industry standard for software delivery performance
The DevOps Research and Assessment (DORA) program identified four metrics that best predict delivery performance — two for speed, two for stability. You can't game one without the others showing it. Full definitions live in our DORA metrics guide and the metrics glossary.
Deployment Frequency
How often you successfully ship to production. TheMetrics counts it from your GitLab production pipelines, per project and per team.
Elite benchmark: on-demand, multiple deploys per dayLead Time for Changes
Commit to production. Long lead times usually point at review queues and release ceremony — TheMetrics breaks the wait stages out.
Elite benchmark: under one dayChange Failure Rate
The share of deployments that need a hotfix, rollback, or patch. The stability counterweight that keeps deployment frequency honest.
Elite benchmark: under 15%Time to Restore Service
How fast you recover when a deployment fails. Optimizing recovery speed is what makes shipping fast safe.
Elite benchmark: under one hourWhy automatic
Hand-rolled DORA dashboards die in a quarter
Most teams that measure DORA start with a script against the GitLab API and a spreadsheet. Three months later the numbers are stale, the definitions have drifted ("does a rollback count as a failure?"), the engineer who wrote the script has moved on — and leadership quietly stops trusting the dashboard.
TheMetrics computes the four keys continuously with consistent definitions, benchmarks them against the standard elite/high/medium/low performance bands, and trends them over time. When the number moves, you can drill into the pipelines and merge requests behind it instead of arguing about the methodology.
And because TheMetrics also reads your ClickUp workspace, DORA doesn't live in a vacuum: pipeline performance sits next to roadmap flow, delivery forecasts, and engineering cost in the same executive report.
How it works
Connected to first DORA dashboard in 20 minutes
Connect GitLab — 2 min
Read-only API access to pipeline, deployment, and merge request metadata. Not your source code contents. Security details.
We backfill pipelines — 20 min
TheMetrics ingests your deployment and merge request history, so the four keys start with real trends instead of an empty chart.
You benchmark & improve
Dashboards trend each key against elite/high/medium/low bands, and executive reports explain the movement in plain language.
FAQ
GitLab DORA questions, answered
What are DORA metrics?
DORA metrics are the four software delivery measures identified by the DevOps Research and Assessment program: deployment frequency, lead time for changes, change failure rate, and time to restore service. The first two measure speed, the last two measure stability — together they are the closest thing engineering has to a standardized performance benchmark.
How does TheMetrics calculate DORA metrics from GitLab?
TheMetrics reads pipeline, deployment, merge request, and commit metadata through the GitLab API with read-only access. Deployment frequency comes from successful production deployments, lead time for changes from commit-to-deploy timestamps, change failure rate from failed deployments and hotfix follow-ups, and time to restore from the gap between a failure and the deployment that resolves it.
Do we need to change our GitLab setup to get DORA metrics?
Usually not. If your production deployments are visible in GitLab — through environments or deployment jobs in your pipelines — the four keys compute automatically. If your setup is unusual, mapping which jobs count as production deployments is a small one-time step during onboarding.
Does TheMetrics read our source code?
The DORA calculation uses metadata — pipeline statuses, deployment timestamps, environments, and merge request events — not the contents of your source files. Access is read-only and revocable at any time. See the security page for the full model.
Can we see DORA metrics alongside our ClickUp delivery data?
Yes, and that pairing is the point of TheMetrics. DORA tells you how the delivery pipeline performs; ClickUp analytics tells you how the roadmap work behind it flows and what it costs. TheMetrics joins both into one set of dashboards and executive reports.
Do you support GitHub or Jira for DORA metrics?
TheMetrics currently supports ClickUp and GitLab, with Jira and GitHub integrations on the roadmap. You can join the integration waitlist from the homepage to be notified when yours is ready.