Post #3528717

2026-05-11 06:37 UTC

Organisational Dysfunction of the Day DORA, the wrong way round Context: The DORA metrics have become the gold standard for measuring engineering performance. Deployment frequency, lead time for changes, change failure rate, and time to restore service. The four key metrics. Teams build dashboards around them, set quarterly targets, and run improvement initiatives to move the numbers in the right direction. Some teams genuinely improve, while others find the numbers are stubborn or that improvements one quarter quietly reverse the next. Leadership concludes that the teams need more discipline, better tooling, or another round of training. What gets called cargo culting (for lack of a better term) in the industry, copying the visible practices without the underlying conditions, is exactly this pattern. OST explains: DORA was designed as a research instrument, not as a target system. The metrics are downstream signals of healthy delivery, not the drivers of it. Healthy delivery is when self-managing teams own the whole product, make decisions without escalation, and have tight feedback loops with the people they serve. Take those structural conditions away, and the numbers regress, no matter how many dashboards you build. Treating DORA as a goal in DP1 (bureaucratic) is exactly the goal displacement Goodhart warned about: the moment a measure becomes a target, it stops being a good measure. In DP2, the self-managing-group structure, the same numbers emerge naturally as side effects of work well done. You do not need to chase them. You need to build the conditions that produce them. #OpenSystemsTheory #SocioTechnical #OrgDesign #DevOps

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@trondhjort@hachyderm.io 2026-05-12 07:43

Organisational Dysfunction of the Day Burned by design Context: People are burning out. Not one or two, but a pattern across the organisation. The response is usually more support: capacity planning, better prioritisation, blocking time for work, reduced meeting loads, encouragement to take time off, and reminders that it is okay to set boundaries. Some people recover. Others leave. New people arrive and, after a while, show the same signs. The organisation is aware that this is not sustainable but frames it as a consequence of a demanding industry or a difficult period. It will get better soon; we just need to pass this hurdle. OST explains: Burnout is not primarily a capacity or resilience problem; it is a job design problem. The conditions most strongly associated with burnout, like lack of control, unclear demands, and absence of meaningful feedback, are structural features of the bureaucratic DP1; not unfortunate side effects. Many do not burn out immediately; they switch off first. Presenteeism, being physically present but mentally absent, is the earlier stage of the same structural problem, and burnout is what happens when even the switching off stops working. The numbers are striking. The WHO projected that by 2020 depression would be the second leading cause of disability globally. Gallup reports that 20% of employees experience daily loneliness, in a setting where people actively come together to produce something. One documented DP1 to DP2 transition showed a 28% decrease in absenteeism and an 81% increase in engagement in the first year, with no major technical changes. Adding support resources helps individuals cope with a system that is harming them, but does not change the system. The tree was planted in the wrong soil; repotting is not optional. #OpenSystemsTheory #SocioTechnical #OrgDesign #health

Open ##3528716