Change Failure Rate Explained — Keep It Under 15% (DORA Metric)

Reducing your change failure rate doesn't mean eliminating all mistakes—it's about building systems that catch problems early and help you recover faster. We've identified six powerful practices that can transform how your team delivers software, keeping you under that critical 15% failure threshold while maintaining velocity.

Many teams struggle with balancing speed and quality, often sacrificing one for the other. But the best-performing organizations have discovered that implementing the right safeguards actually enables them to move faster with greater confidence. From static analysis that catches 40% of potential production bugs before they leave your machine to progressive delivery techniques that have helped companies reduce incidents by 90%, these practices create a foundation for sustainable development.

In this video, we explore everything from the fundamentals of type safety and automated testing to infrastructure as code, technical debt management, and effective postmortems. Each practice builds upon the others to create a comprehensive approach to reducing failures while maintaining or even increasing your delivery speed.

By implementing these six practices, you'll not only see your change failure rate drop quarter after quarter, but you'll also experience less stress, greater confidence, and the ability to focus on innovation rather than firefighting.

📒 Chapters 📒
00:00 - Introduction to Code Safety Practices
00:41 - Tip #6: Static Analysis and Type Safety
01:37 - Tip #5: Automated Testing and Contract Tests
02:45 - Tip #4: Progressive Delivery with Feature Flags
03:26 - Tip #3: Infrastructure as Code and Immutable Environments
04:27 - Tip #2: Technical Debt Cleanup
05:38 - Tip #1: Effective Postmortems and Implementation
06:43 - Conclusion and Additional Resources

▬▬▬▬▬▬ Want to learn more? ▬▬▬▬▬▬
🚀 Get Started with Pulumi: https://pulumip.us/Get-Started
🤖 Try Pulumi AI: https://www.pulumi.com/ai/
💬 Talk with us: https://slack.pulumi.com/