Velocity & Throughput
Velocity drives time-to-market. Faster throughput enables quicker delivery of features, responsiveness to customer needs, and adaptability. This boosts productivity and value using the same resources. Financially, it can lead to earlier revenue and lower cost per feature. However, speed must not sacrifice quality. The ELEVATE framework ensures balance by pairing velocity with metrics like defect rates and resilience, so faster deployment doesn't mean faster failure.
How to measure
Deployment Frequency
How often the team delivers software to users (indicator of throughput and agility)
Daily or on-demand releases (elite teams deploy multiple times per day)
Lead Time for Changes
Time from code committed to code running in production (speed of delivery pipeline).
< 1 day lead time from code to deploy (fast CI/CD pipeline with automation).
Code Quality
Quality issues hurt the business. Critical bugs can lead to customer dissatisfaction, lost revenue, and brand damage. Poor code quality also slows development, making new features harder to deliver. Investing in quality protects revenue, builds trust, and boosts engineering efficiency by reducing rework.
How to measure
Escaped Defect Rate
Bugs or incidents discovered in production per release or per time period (product quality as experienced by customers)
Near-zero critical defects; trending down on customer- reported issues.
Comprehensive Testing Trophy
Testing follows the testing trophy principle with strong coverage across test types, prioritising fast feedback, low brittleness, and effective strategies
70% unit tests, 20% integration tests, 10% end-to-end tests (prioritises fast feedback and minimises brittle, high-cost tests)
Resilience
Operational Resilience matters because downtime impacts revenue and trust. Whether it’s lost sales from an e-commerce outage or churn in B2B due to service instability, reliability is critical. Metrics like uptime and recovery time give leaders confidence and offer early warnings. For executives, this translates to reduced risk of disruption for customers and the business.
How to measure
Change Failure Rate
Percentage of deployments causing a failure (stability of releases)
< 15% of releases cause issues (low failure rate indicates reliable releases)
Mean Time to Recovery (MTTR)
How quickly the team restores service after an incident (ability to respond and recover)
< 1 hour MTTR for high-severity incidents (rapid recovery capability)
Uptime
Overall availability of the product/service (service reliability for customers)
99.9%+ uptime (at most ~9 hours of downtime per year)
Collaboration & Flow
Efficient collaboration and flow boost productivity by removing roadblocks, not by working harder. Smooth hand-offs, quick feedback (like faster PR reviews), and shared context speed up delivery and reduce errors. This leads to better throughput, less wasted time, and higher team morale. Strong collaboration also builds resilience, lowers turnover, and supports a culture where people thrive. ELEVATE promotes goals like reducing review times or limiting WIP to create a virtuous cycle of speed, quality, and engagement.
How to measure
PR Cycle Time
How long from opening a pull request to it being merged (smoothness of development workflow)
< 1 day on average for PRs to be reviewed and merged (fast feedback loops)
Work in Progress
Number of ongoing tasks in parallel (focus and flow efficiency)
WIP kept low to avoid multitasking – e.g. at most 1–2 active tasks per engineer at a time
Focus on delivering value
Teams focus on delivering value all the way to production and releasing features to end users in the shortest possible time
Team members work right-to-left on agile boards to fully complete tickets.
Onboarding & Enablement
Onboarding and enablement are key to unlocking the ROI of hiring. Faster ramp-up means new engineers deliver value sooner, while clear processes and good tooling prevent wasted time and frustration. Effective enablement boosts retention, scales teams smoothly, and ensures all engineers can work efficiently. ELEVATE highlights these metrics to ensure talent is not just hired—but empowered to succeed.
How to measure
Time to First Deploy
How quickly a new hire deploys code to production (effectiveness of onboarding)
Within first week on the job (shows rapid onboarding and enablement)
Full Productivity Ramp-up
Time for a new engineer to reach full productivity (mastering their role and domain)
~1–2 months to autonomy (vs. industry norm of 3–6 months)
Progression by Craft
Progression by Craft boosts long-term engineering productivity by growing talent from within. Investing in skill development and clear career paths leads to higher retention, better innovation, and a strong leadership pipeline. It’s often more effective than external hiring and helps teams stay current, engaged, and resilient. ELEVATE emphasizes this as a core pillar—recognizing that today’s investments in people shape tomorrow’s performance.
How to measure
Internal Promotion Rate
Share of roles filled by internal candidates (growth opportunities provided).
> 20–30% of engineering openings filled internally (strong talent pipeline).
Engineering Satisfaction
Team’s reported engagement or happiness (overall morale and health of team)
High and rising engagement scores (e.g. > 8/10), indicating a creative, resilient team