Measuring DORA metrics across tools – Jira, Azure DevOps, ServiceNow

Many large enterprises rely on multiple tools to deliver software, but stitching those tools together to measure performance is anything but simple. See how this major North American manufacturing company solved the problem, pulling data from Jira, Azure DevOps, and ServiceNow into one DORA metrics dashboard.

The Challenge

The teams used:

• Jira to track features and bugs
• Azure DevOps for builds and deployments
• ServiceNow for change and incident management

Each tool did its job well, but none of them showed the full picture. There was no simple way to trace how work moved from idea to production, making it tough to measure performance or spot opportunities to improve.

ServiceNow did offer out-of-the-box DORA metric insights that were a helpful starting point. However the company needed more flexibility. They wanted to define each DORA metric in a way that aligned with how their teams actually worked, and that wasn’t something the default ServiceNow setup could easily support.

What the company really needed:

• A more flexible way to define and visualize key metrics
• Dashboards tailored to their own interpretation of DORA
• Easy filtering by timeframes like the past 7 days, 30 days, or year-to-date
• The ability to share dashboards with stakeholders outside the DevOps team
• A solution that didn’t require heavy customization or development

What helped them get there

They needed a way to bring together data from Jira, Azure DevOps, and ServiceNow into a single dashboard that reflected how their teams actually worked. SquaredUp offers pre-built DORA dashboards as a strong starting point. But the real value came from how easy it was to tailor DORA metrics within the dashboard to reflect their own delivery process.

Defining DORA metrics on their own terms

Using the pre-built dashboard in SquaredUp as a springboard, the company adjusted each metric to reflect their needs, combining data across tools where necessary.

The manufacturing company’s take on the DORA Metrics, one by one:

1. Deployment Frequency
This metric followed the standard DORA definition, so the out-of-the-box SquaredUp tile worked well with little to no modification. They adjusted the query timeframe to 30 days to align with their reporting needs, but otherwise the default tile worked out of the box.

2. Lead Time for Changes

For Lead Time, they combined data from Jira and ServiceNow using SQL Analytics. Each Jira ticket was linked to a corresponding change in ServiceNow using a custom field for the change number. This let them stitch the two data streams together and calculate lead time based on how their work actually flowed:

Lead Time = Resolved date of the ServiceNow Change – Created date of the linked Jira issue

A simple SQL query stitched the two sources together, giving them full control, and since the tiles were fully customizable, they could adjust or extend the logic anytime.

3. Change Failure Rate
They used the Table Query data stream in SquaredUp to pull all change requests from ServiceNow and calculate the percentage of changes marked as unsuccessful based on their internal criteria. Here’s how they did it:

4. Mean Time to Recovery (MTTR)

They used ServiceNow’s incident data, focusing on Priority 1 cases, to measure how long it took to resolve the most critical issues.

The final dashboard

The result was a dashboard that reflected their actual delivery performance. It was easy to share with stakeholders, display on team monitors, and adapt as their processes evolved.

Try it for yourself

If you're curious to see how SquaredUp could work for your team, you can start by creating a free account and connecting your own data sources.

Happy dashboarding!