Change failure rate by deploy frequency
The throughput-vs-stability question, settled. Elite teams sit bottom-right.
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Oliver Wakefield-Smith
Founder, Digital Signet. Built siemcost / monitoringcost / itbudgetcalculator.
Updated 21 Jun 2026
Direct answer
The 2024 DORA cohort shows elite teams sustaining low CFR (sub-5%) at high deploy frequency (40+ per week) through small-batch deploys and fast rollback paths DORA 2024 Report2024. The naïve "deploy less to break less" hypothesis is not supported by the dataGoogle Cloud DORA 20232023.
elite cohort high medium low your team
The small-batch hypothesis
Smaller deploys are easier to reason about, easier to roll back, and limit blast radius. Teams shipping 50+ deploys per week run smaller diffs on average and detect failures in seconds, not hours. The cost of a failure scales sub-linearly with deploy size in those cohorts.
Where your team plots
The scatter above includes anchor cohorts approximating the 2024 DORA distribution shape. Run the main calculator on the homepage to overlay your own dot in magenta.
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