Anti-Patterns & Guardrails

Purpose and scope

Surface common failure modes with DORA adoption and how to prevent them.

Outcomes

• Metrics inform improvements, not individual evaluation.
• Stable definitions even when numbers look bad.
• Guardrails embedded in process and tooling.

Signals of trouble

• Team-level leaderboards and score shaming.
• Sudden redefinition to hit targets.
• Over-focusing on one metric at the expense of others.

Remediation steps

1. Aggregate metrics at system or team level only.
2. Lock definitions; treat changes as breaking and version them.
3. Balance metrics; review lead/lag indicators together.

Checklists and assets

• playbooks/measure-dora-metrics/checklist.md governance items.

References

• “Accelerate”; internal policy on measurement ethics.