The 2024 DORA Report: State of DevOps Breakdown Summary

For the past 10 years, we have seen Accelerate State of DevOps: Report released annually, built upon the insights and data from thousands of industry respondents. The 2024 DORA Report was published recently.

As you can probably guess, the report is packed with data and insights that not only give a deep dive into software delivery and operations but also pack a lot of value for Engineering Managers, Engineering Leaders and Software Engineers.

So, we thought why not take our notes from this year's DORA Report, expand on them a little bit and share them with you in an article. This blog provides a summarized view of the report’s findings, highlighting what matters most for team productivity, AI integration, and platform engineering.

Of course since this is a summary it cannot cover all the nuances that the DORA team have covered in their complete report, so while we do think this article is extremely valuable we still believe that just going through this blog will not be enough especially when it comes to context and methodology.

“Granny sighed. "You have learned something," she said, and thought it safe to insert a touch of sternness into her voice. "They say a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but it is not one half so bad as a lot of ignorance.”
― Terry Pratchett, Equal Rites

If you want exceptional visibility & actionable insights for your org’s software delivery process, Middleware is your go to tool to get started within minutes & start a process transformation!

1. State of Software Delivery Performance

Performance benchmarks this year look as crazy as they do every year if we compare elite teams to low performing teams.

Chart from The 2024 DORA Report, Pg 14

Elite teams show unparalleled efficiency and recovery rates, which definitely say something about the value of mature DevOps practices.

• 127x faster lead time for changes

• 182x more frequent deployments

• 8x lower change failure rate

• 2293x faster failure recovery time

Elite teams set a high bar, showing how consistent, high-velocity performance can dramatically improve software delivery outcomes.

However, we loved what the report says about elite performance: “The best teams are those that achieve elite improvement, not necessarily elite performance”

This is something we have mentioned in our articles around DORA Metrics as well. 2 distinct teams, of distinct size, delivering distinct software, to distinct users should not be compared in absolute terms without context.

2. AI’s Role in Software Delivery

AI adoption is picking up rapidly, yet concerns around trust in AI-generated code remain.

Chart from The 2024 DORA Report, Pg 20

This year’s report dove into how teams are adapting to AI integration and its impact on productivity.

• 39% of developers report little or no trust in AI-generated code quality

• 81% say their organizations have shifted priorities to increase AI incorporation into applications

• At an individual level 75.9% are relying on AI in things like writing code, summarizing info, documentation, writing tests etc.

Building trust and transparency in AI tools is essential as organizations increasingly adopt AI in development workflows. Even though AI is helping people do meaningful work with increased productivity the overall sentiment still remains somewhat of concern.

One participant even likened the need to evaluate and modify the outputs of AI-generated code to “the early days of StackOverflow, [when] you always thought people on StackOverflow are really experienced, you know, that they will know exactly what to do. And then, you just copy and paste the stuff, and things explode ” (P2). — 2024 DORA Report, Pg 24

3. Platform Engineering’s Impact on Developer Experience

Platform engineering transforms developer workflows, enabling self-service and reducing friction.

Platforms behave in a similar way as transformation efforts, the early effects tend to be positive with a dip in the mid-term and recovery as the internal platform matures.

Chart from The 2024 DORA Report, Pg 50

• 8% increase in individual productivity with internal platforms

• 6% gain in productivity at the team level

• And here we go: an 8% decrease in throughput & 14% decrease in change stability!

While platforms smoothen out the processes, they introduce new layers of complexity that can impact throughput and stability. Increased handoffs and dependencies may hinder speed.

Platform teams should balance automation with flexibility to prevent these operational slowdowns.

Overall, internal platforms show great promise in boosting productivity and team efficiency across development organizations however they are not a cure-all!

4. Developer Independence and Self-Service Workflows

Developer autonomy, a core principle of platform engineering, correlates strongly with productivity gains.

Self-service capabilities reduce dependencies on enabling teams and accelerate project timelines(owing to less handoffs and touchpoints within the process).

• 5% productivity gain at individual and team levels for developers without an “enabling team”

Interestingly, the impact on productivity of having a dedicated platform team was negligible for individuals. However, it resulted in a 6% gain in productivity at the team level. This finding is surprising because of its uneven impact, suggesting that having a dedicated platform team is useful to individuals, but the dedicated platform team is more impactful for teams overall.

Since teams have multiple developers with different responsibilities and skills, they naturally have a more diverse set of tasks when compared to an individual engineer. It is possible that having a dedicated platform engineering team allows the platform to be more supportive of the diversity in tasks represented by a team. — 2024 DORA Report, Pg 52

5. The Role of Documentation in Developer Productivity

While Agile emphasizes "working software over documentation," DORA's findings highlight that quality documentation is essential for effective development.

Strong documentation isn't just about quantity but ensuring content is findable and reliable. A user-centered approach to documentation supports developer independence and enables smoother workflows.

Chart from The 2024 DORA Report, Pg 63

• Focus on findability and reliability to keep documentation useful

• Promote a sustainable documentation culture that maintains relevance

• User-focused documentation amplifies technical capabilities and organizational impact

In short, well-maintained, user-centered documentation is foundational to productivity.

6. User-Centric Focus and Transformational Leadership

Focusing on the user in software development yields notable gains, with transformational leadership playing a significant role.

Leaders who empower teams and align projects with user needs increase productivity, satisfaction, and overall organizational performance.

• User-centered development correlates with a 40% boost in organizational performance(2023 metric)

• Strong transformational leadership(increasing transformational leadership by 25%) leads to a 9% productivity increase

Organizations combining user-centric practices with transformational leadership push team towards success and impactful, user-aligned products.

Let’s Wrap This

The 2024 DORA Report highlights that robust DevOps practices, responsible AI integration, and thoughtful platform engineering are key to high performance.

For teams looking to achieve these benchmarks, Middleware offers a straightforward, quick way to measure and refine your DORA metrics, Project Flow Metrics, Bottleneck analysis out of the box to refine your software delivery practices.