Analyzing GitHub PRs with DORA Reports via CTO.ai

by Tola Ore-Aruwaji

Introduction

Imagine you're a chef in a bustling kitchen, trying to keep track of every ingredient and process. That's quite similar to managing a software project, where GitHub Pull Requests (PRs) are your ingredients and DORA Reports are your recipe book. CTO.ai offers a tool, much like a kitchen assistant, to make this process smoother. With the /ops measure command, insights from DORA Reports become easily accessible, offering a clear view of your project's health.

The Importance of DORA Reports

DORA Reports are like your cooking checklist. They offer four key metrics:

  • Deployment Frequency: How often you're serving dishes (deploying code). This measures how often code is deployed, indicating the speed of software delivery.
  • Change Lead Time: The time it takes from preparing your ingredients (code commit) to serving the dish (code deployment).
  • Change Failure Rate: The percentage of dishes that need a quick fix after being served (failed deployments). This also assesses the percentage of deployments that fail, providing insight into the reliability of the release process.
  • Failure Deployment Recovery Time: How fast you can whip up a new dish if something goes wrong (time to recover from a failed deployment). This metric measures how quickly a team can recover from a failed deployment, indicating the resilience of the deployment process.

These metrics help in understanding the efficiency and reliability of your software development process.

Integrating CTO.ai with GitHub PRs

CTO.ai acts like a smart kitchen gadget. It seamlessly integrates with GitHub, bringing DORA insights directly to your PRs. When you use the /ops measure command in your PRs, it's like having a thermometer that instantly tells you if your dish is cooked perfectly. Before you can get started, there are some prerequisites you need to install on your local machine:

  • Create or sign in to your CTO.ai account
  • Install the CTO.ai GitHub App: In the CTO.ai dashboard, install the GitHub App to your repositories by clicking on Install GitHub App.

  • Select the repository(s) you want to install the GitHub App on and click on Authorize.

Next, within your PR, type /ops measure in the PR comment. This command fetches the DORA metrics relevant to the PR.  The /ops measure command provides immediate feedback on the performance metrics of the code changes proposed in the PR.

Interpreting the data from your PR: The DORA report will display metrics, guiding you on what’s working well and what needs improvement. The DORA report provides valuable insights into the efficiency and quality of the code changes. It assists in making informed decisions about the code merges and deployment strategies.

Back in the CTO.ai insights dashboard, you can still see your dashboard overview indicating your deployment status, event timeline, and metrics overview.

Conclusion

Integrating DORA Reports with GitHub PRs using CTO.ai offers a straightforward, effective way to measure and enhance software development practices. It provides immediate, actionable insights, enabling teams to refine their processes for better efficiency and reliability continually.  Get started with CTO.ai insights for free.