Global Capability Centres (GCCs) are increasingly establishing a solid presence in India’s tech sector. Contributing significantly to the Indian economy, the market is poised to expand to $110 billion by 2030, marking a 144% increase. However, as more and more GCCs mushroom, the pressure on launching new products is at an all-time high.

Although DevOps is now a mantra most GCCs swear by for better product quality and speed to market, not many understand the importance of measuring its success and making tweaks to improve application quality and time to market.

This blog will explore why measuring DevOps success is essential and how focusing on the right metrics can transform GCC performance and efficiency.

Why Measure DevOps Success

As of 2023, at least twenty percent of Forbes’ 200 global companies have set up GCCs in India, a number that is estimated to increase by 50% by 2030. DevOps is a crucial element of modern-day GCCs, empowering them to achieve operational effectiveness and agility.

However, most GCCs only focus on implementing DevOps and not on measuring or monitoring the success of their DevOps efforts.  Without the right DevOps metrics or KPIs in place, it becomes tough for organizations to identify areas of improvement.

Regularly tracking DevOps metrics can enable GCCs to:

• Accelerate development velocity by identifying bottlenecks, improving processes, and enhancing collaboration.
• Make data-driven decisions on product roadmaps by unearthing insights into processes, performance, resource efficiency, etc.
• Enable continuous improvement by better understanding change failures, unresolved defects, build time, etc.
• Increase quality by working on bottlenecks, streamlining processes, and optimizing resources.
• Ensure alignment with business goals by acting on quantitative data and making suitable future investments and strategic initiatives.
• Reduce development risk by getting insights into team performance, product quality, and potential issues; these metrics help teams proactively identify and mitigate risks. Here’s how DevOps metrics contribute to risk reduction:
• Shorten feedback loops by identifying inefficiencies in processes and making quicker iterations.
• Minimize development costs by accelerating development speed and deployment frequency and resolving issues early in the lifecycle.

Key Metrics to Measure

When it comes to measuring DevOps success, several metrics come into play. Here are the top metrics GCCs should focus on to drive the best results:

• Deployment frequency: DevOps teams need good insight into how often they can deploy into production. The deployment frequency metric quantifies the number of times code is successfully deployed to production, typically over a week, month, or pre-defined period. High deployment frequency leads to faster feedback, enabling teams to indicates that a team can respond quickly to user needs and market trends and deliver value quickly.
• Lead time for changes: Bringing products quickly to the market is the top priority for any DevOps team. Therefore, a critical metric to track is the lead time for changes or the time it takes for a change request to be implemented and delivered. This helps teams assess the efficiency of the development process by uncovering insight into how long it takes them to respond to changes. Short lead times indicate that teams can adapt quickly to changing requirements. Shorter lead times reflect a more efficient development process, demonstrating that teams can quickly turn changes and fixes into production-ready code.
• Change failure rate: The change failure rate metric showcases the percentage of deployments that fail post-implementation and require hot fixes or other remediation measures. Calculated as the ratio of failed changes to the total number of changes deployed over a particular time frame, the change failure rate highlights potential issues in the development process and encourages appropriate mitigation strategies. A low change failure rate enhances aplication stability, indicating that changes are reliably implemented without issues.
• Mean time to recovery: Mean time to recovery (MTTR) enables DevOps teams to measure the time it takes to recover from a minor service interruption or total failure. It demonstrates teams’ ability to respond to and resolve issues that impact system availability and performance. A lower MTTR indicates that teams can quickly detect and resolve issues, minimizing downtime and improving user experience. . 
• Customer satisfaction score: Although customer satisfaction score isn’t directly related to DevOps, it indicates how happy customers are with a product post-deployment. Based on customer feedback, DevOps teams can prioritize product features or enhancements and track the impact of changes, thereby improving overall quality. A higher CSAT score showcases a higher level of customer satisfaction and can lead to higher loyalty and lifetime value. 
• Cycle time: Cycle time is another critical metric that helps measure DevOps success. It provides insight into the total time taken to complete a task from start to finish, showcasing the team’s efficiency in delivering value to customers. Tracking average cycle times empowers teams to predict future tasks, improving planning and resource allocation. A low cycle time reflects the team’s ability to quickly develop, test, and deploy features or fixes, resulting in faster value delivery to customers. 
• Error rates: As DevOps teams develop and deploy code to meet evolving market and customer needs, the error rate metric measures the frequency of errors occurring. It provides insights into the quality and reliability of deployments, empowering them to identify areas for improvement in tools and processes. High error rates can indicate underlying issues in coding, testing, or deploying software, empowering teams to take necessary steps in maintaining quality and reliability. 

Wrapping Up

India has become a popular hub for setting up GCCs, with over 1,600 GCCs now in the country, employing over 1.66 million professionals. As GCCs look to strengthen their delivery capabilities, DevOps metrics offer a great way to monitor (and improve) their efficiency.

However, measurement should not be the only goal. While DevOps metrics help teams take the proper steps forward, organizations should not just laud those that can deliver software the fastest. They should appreciate and recognize teams that gradually improve these metrics and strike a fine balance between deployment speed, operational performance, and user experience.