Change failure rate

As explained in Platform Engineering on Kubernetes

Change failure rate is the proportion of software deployments that require remediation because they cause failures or degradations in production.

Change failure rate measures the proportion of deployments whose production changes create problems requiring failure recovery or remediation. It is one of the DORA delivery metrics, alongside deployment frequency, lead time for change, and time to restore service. section 9.1

A platform can calculate the metric through a data pipeline:

• Collect deployment and production events from multiple systems. section 9.2.2
• Normalize incoming events as CloudEvents, adapting sources that do not follow the specification. section 9.2.2
• Store incoming data and calculated results in persistent storage, such as PostgreSQL. section 9.2.2
• Transform events, calculate the metric values, and expose the results through a dashboard. section 9.2.2

Figure 9.1 DORA metrics by category

Use the DORA metrics diagram to position change failure rate among velocity and recovery indicators. section 9.1

How Platform Engineering on Kubernetes covers it

How deep it goes

Explains the metric’s role and a collection pipeline, but does not provide a detailed calculation formula or remediation policy.

Examples

Uses event sources, CloudEvents normalization, Knative Serving functions, PostgreSQL storage, and dashboards as pipeline components.

What it assumes

Assumes familiarity with software delivery systems while identifying CloudEvents as the required event format for incoming data.

What you can do after

Calculate change failure rate by collecting, standardizing, storing, processing, and presenting delivery events.

How it connects

Connects change failure rate with DORA metrics, deployment frequency, lead time for change, time to restore service, CloudEvents, and CDEvents.

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Also explained in

• 

  liveBookmanning.com
  Effective Platform EngineeringChange failure rate is the proportion of software deployments that cause a failure requiring remediation, rollback, or another corrective action.
• 

  liveBookmanning.com
  Infrastructure as Code, Patterns and Practices: With examples in Python and TerraformChange failure rate is the proportion of deployments or changes that require remediation, rollback, or other corrective action because they fail.

Compare how 3 books explain change failure rate →

Related concepts

• DORApart of · DORA is a research and measurement framework for software delivery performance, commonly using deployment frequency, lead time for changes, change failure rate, and time to restore service.
• test isolationproduced by · Test isolation is the property or practice of executing tests independently so their outcomes are not affected by other tests, shared state, dependencies, or external conditions.
• deployment frequencyused by · Deployment frequency is the rate at which software changes are deployed to a target environment, such as production.

This explainer was generated by Manning's knowledge graph from the text of Platform Engineering on Kubernetes. The section links point to the parts of the book it draws on.