DevOps Metrics: Lies, Damned Lies and Statistics
There are tons of metrics available for IT Operations. ITIL mandates/suggest a number of them. They can be related to Technology, Process, People, Service. But are they really needed? The good news: in general only a few. The bad news: every context is different and you will have to understand on your own which are relevant for you – and they should (better) change over time.
Metrics and KPIs may (do) foster bad behavior. It’s pretty easy to cheat and lie about numbers and statistics. As the say goes “tell me how you measure me and I will tell you how I behave”. This is true in particular when numbers are used for performance reviews and for local optimization. Agile and Lean have a lot to say about metrics and why and how they should be used.
At the Italian DevOps Day 2015 in Bologna I discussed with the audience some of these. Here are my slides and pointers.