Measuring Service Failure, or why to not use CFR and MTTR

Change Failure Rate (CFR) and Mean Time to Recovery (MTTR) are two engineering metrics popularised in Accelerate (2018) and subsequent DevOps Research and Assessment (DORA) State of DevOps Reports . Since publication, all DORA metrics have been assessed, adopted, and validated by technology companies across the world.

Experts in the industry have found fault with CFR and MTTR. Specifically, while these are powerful frames to think about service reliability, the data presented in the form of the …


Engineering Productivity, GenAI, Metrics, Toil

January 17 2024 · tech devops ai software-engineering aws

Boost software development productivity by 50x, so was the message on the expo floor at AWS re:Invent. Hundreds of vendors, from startup to enterprise, had booths at the expo marketing their developer tooling, platforms, and consulting services. GenAI has been in full swing for a couple of years now, and with the recent trends of organisational efficiency, the two have married up. Most booths touted how recent GenAI features they’ve added improves the productivity of software developers. …


Western Landscapes

Badwater Basin

Badwater Basin

The day trip to Death Valley landed me at Badwater Basin in the early afternoon. The winter sun was low and a slight haze removed the hardness of the sun. Recent storms flooded the typically dry salt flats which resulted in great reflections and an interesting foreground. The vastness of the sky lead me to think of painter …


Las Vegas

January 1 2024 · film-photography monochrome
The strip

The strip

Las Vegas, baby. I was visiting for a work conference so I brought a couple of film cameras along with me. I wanted to shoot gonzo-style – black and white film, high contrast, shooting from the hip, and capturing impromptu scenes within casinos and along the strip. I needed to be able to shoot quickly within the smog filled casinos. For …


Hydra

North coast

North coast

My recent travels around Egypt and Greece were inspired by Lawrence Durrell’s writing. He was a self-proclaimed islomaniac, someone that the “mere knowledge that they are on an island, a little world surrounded by the sea, fills them with an indescribable intoxication”. Durrell was a poet, novelist, and travel writer, and …