DORA, SPACE, DevEx, DX Core 4

Published on Feb 5, 2025, filed under management (feed). (Share this on Mastodon or Bluesky?)

There are a few frameworks to measure engineering delivery and operations performance. Among the most popular ones are DORA, SPACE, and DevEx. This is a quick casual summary of these frameworks (including a newer alternative, “DX Core 4”) as well as a few comments.

Framework Metrics

DORA

DORA (DevOps Research and Assessment) looks at four metrics that revolve around throughput and stability:

• Throughput
  1. Lead time
  2. Deployment frequency
• Stability
  3. Change fail percentage
  4. Failed deployment recovery time

SPACE

The SPACE framework works with five categories for which various metrics can be pulled in, to obtain a more holistic view at productivity:

1. Satisfaction and well-being
2. Performance
3. Activity
4. Communication and collaboration
5. Efficiency and flow

DevEx

The DevEx framework takes a different approach by considering three attributes, each for which surveys can provide data points:

1. Feedback loops
2. Cognitive load
3. Flow state

DX Core 4

DX Core aims to unify the ideas behind DORA, SPACE, and DevEx, by looking at four priorities for which there are key and secondary metrics:

1. Speed (key metric: diffs—PRs/MRs—per engineer)
2. Effectiveness (Developer Experience Index)
3. Quality (change failure rate)
4. Impact (% of time spent on new capabilities)

DX has a great paper that goes into detail on all four frameworks: DORA, SPACE, and DevEx: Which Framework Should You Use?

Framework Experiences

I’ve seen DORA and SPACE in action, but not to a degree where I’ve felt entirely comfortable.

The problem I connect with DORA is that it ignores how the engineering organization is doing. If we’re productive while people are burning out left and right, then we’re not doing our work well even though DORA tells otherwise.

This is different with SPACE, and I like the holistic nature of it, covering well-being and collaboration as well. Having been using a customized version of Spotify’s Squad Health Check model for many years, I think it’s critical and possible to get some data points on team health, something that can be evaluated further in performance and stay questions.

For DevEx and DX Core I’m lacking data and experience. In the case of DevEx, I know no organization yet that uses it. In the care of DX Core, it feels too new. From how I understand these frameworks, I can see how health and happiness somewhat flows into DevEx, and how that’s being picked up with the DEI/DXI (Developer Experience Index) in DX Core. However, it seems indirect (and possibly too indirect) to me—team health and happiness are important, they are hard to measure, and if they’re being abstracted behind a layer of surrounding communication and mental load, I worry whether they end up being measured at all.

This, then, makes me wonder whether SPACE isn’t still the most suitable because most holistic framework—and what your thoughts and experiences are. What have you worked with, what are your preferences? Comments are off here, but please follow up on Mastodon, or maybe on Bluesky. Cheers!