A smart investment: FINRA builds a culture of improvement with DORA

FINRA, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, consistently seeks to achieve the highest standards in its technology practices. To elevate its software development lifecycle, FINRA — which oversees member broker-dealers — engaged Google consultants to help apply a metrics-driven methodology to its engineering practices.

DORA is a popular framework for helping organization improve software delivery performance through capabilities that can be measured by key metrics. These include deployment frequency, change lead time, change failure rate, failed deployment recovery time, and rework.

While FINRA had begun laying the groundwork to adopt DORA internally, the organization recognized an opportunity to accelerate implementation by tapping Google's firsthand experience.

Google conducted a discovery effort alongside technology leaders to identify opportunities for improvement. The recommendation that followed included increasing the existing focus on continuous improvement, adopting a user-centric approach to developing software and further enabling a generative culture within the department.

The implementation itself was deliberately flexible. Rather than recommending a one-size-fits-all approach, Google helped FINRA tailor its actions to individual team objectives. Teams prioritizing product value concentrated on lead time and deployment frequency metrics, while teams focused on stability concentrated on change failure rates and failed deployment recovery time.

Over the first year of implementation, engineering teams demonstrated continuous improvement across DORA capabilities, achieving a 9% per-developer productivity gain and reporting directionally positive developer experience feedback.

Sprint velocities also improved by 5%, enabling smaller engineering teams to deliver greater incremental product value to the business. Beyond raw metrics, teams also reported heightened transparency around delivery performance and appreciation for a standardized methodology.

Looking ahead, FINRA is maturing its DORA practice by providing more granular metrics tied to high-level DORA measurements, increasing emphasis on developer experience and correlating product metrics with software delivery performance indicators.

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