Accelerate: The Science of Lean Software and DevOps

Four years of rigorous research proves delivery speed and stability aren’t trade-offs—this book gives you the data-driven metrics to secure executive buy-in for platform investments.

Who This Is For

Engineering directors building platform teams who need quantitative proof that DevOps works. VPs and CTOs justifying transformation budgets to finance and board members. SRE managers measuring reliability improvements. Technology leaders arguing against false speed-versus-stability dichotomies.

Key Takeaways

• Use the four DORA metrics—deployment frequency, lead time for changes, mean time to recovery, and change fail rate—as leading indicators of organizational performance.
• High performers achieve both speed and stability simultaneously; treating them as trade-offs signals process dysfunction, not engineering reality.
• Trunk-based development with short-lived feature branches dramatically improves delivery performance compared to long-lived feature branches or GitFlow.
• Architecture matters more than tools: loosely coupled systems enable teams to deploy independently without coordination overhead or deployment windows.
• Transformational leadership and generative team culture predict performance better than technology choices—invest in people, not just platforms.