GitLab 18.x Ultimate provides native support for all four DORA metrics via its REST API, giving engineering teams deep insights into the performance and reliability of their software delivery processes.

✅ Prerequisites

Before you begin, ensure:

🧭 Overview of Supported DORA Metrics

🔧 Step 1: Setup Deployments and Environments

1. Define production environments in your CI/CD pipeline:

deploy_prod:
  stage: deploy
  script:
    - ./deploy.sh
  environment:
    name: production
    tier: production

2. Ensure your production deployments are successfully tracked under:
   Project → Operations → Environments

🛠 Step 2: Use GitLab’s Incidents (For CFR + MTTR)

• Go to: Project → Monitor → Incidents
• Create incidents manually or via /incident in issues
• Ensure incidents are associated with the correct environment (production)
• Close incidents when resolved

🧪 Step 3: Generate DORA Metrics Using REST API

🔸 Project-Level DORA Metrics

GET /projects/:id/dora/metrics

Example Request:

curl --header "PRIVATE-TOKEN: <your_access_token>" \
  "https://gitlab.com/api/v4/projects/123456/dora/metrics?metric=deployment_frequency&start_date=2024-01-01&end_date=2024-04-01"
Code language: JavaScript (javascript)

🔸 Group-Level DORA Metrics

GET /groups/:id/dora/metrics

Example Request:

curl --header "PRIVATE-TOKEN: <your_access_token>" \
  "https://gitlab.com/api/v4/groups/5678/dora/metrics?metric=lead_time_for_changes&interval=daily"
Code language: JavaScript (javascript)

📌 Supported API Parameters

📥 Example Responses

[
  { "date": "2024-04-01", "value": 4 },
  { "date": "2024-04-02", "value": 2 }
]
Code language: JSON / JSON with Comments (json)

• value meaning depends on the metric:
  • Deployment Frequency: # of successful deployments
  • Lead Time: Seconds between merge and deploy
  • Change Failure Rate: Ratio (e.g. 0.25 = 25%)
  • MTTR: Seconds taken to resolve incidents

📈 Step 4: Visualize & Analyze Metrics

• Metrics appear in Project → Analytics → CI/CD → DORA Metrics (UI available if licensed)
• You can export metrics to:
  • Grafana / PowerBI / Google Sheets
  • GitLab CI pipeline reports or Slack alerts

⚙️ Step 5: Automate DORA API Pulls Using GitLab CI Job

Add the following job to your .gitlab-ci.yml file:

dora_metrics:
  stage: report
  script:
    - mkdir -p dora
    - |
      for metric in deployment_frequency lead_time_for_changes change_failure_rate time_to_restore_service; do
        curl --silent --header "PRIVATE-TOKEN: $GITLAB_TOKEN" \
          "https://gitlab.com/api/v4/projects/$CI_PROJECT_ID/dora/metrics?metric=$metric&start_date=$(date -I -d '30 days ago')&end_date=$(date -I)&interval=daily" \
          > "dora/${metric}.json"
      done
    - echo "✅ DORA metrics saved in the 'dora' directory"
  artifacts:
    paths:
      - dora/
    expire_in: 7 days
Code language: PHP (php)

🔐 CI/CD Variable Required

This will generate JSON files in dora/ which can be uploaded to dashboards or emailed/reported as needed.

🧠 Best Practices

• Keep production tier tagging consistent for environments
• Use structured commit messages to link MRs to features
• Automate incident creation when pipeline fails in production
• Pull metrics into dashboards to observe trends

✅ Summary

Rajesh Kumar

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