Unlocking product success by combining DORA and H.E.A.R.T.

Creating successful software involves more than just writing code; it's about crafting experiences that people value. We believe that to do this well, you need a full perspective—one that links how efficiently you build to the quality of the experience for people who use your product.

DORA and H.E.A.R.T. are two helpful frameworks. DORA is often discussed by engineering and DevOps teams, while H.E.A.R.T. is typically a topic for product and design teams. Their full potential becomes clear when you bring them together. By combining the "how" of software delivery with the "why" of people liking what you build, you can create a cycle of ongoing improvement that helps the business.

This post shows how to combine these two data-driven frameworks to get a complete picture of your product's health and, in the end, make better products.

DORA: Measuring how you build

At its core, DORA answers a key question: "How well and consistently can we deliver value to people who use our products?" This framework, based on years of research, points to a set of capabilities and measurements that best predict strong software development and delivery teams.

These capabilities help with your team's speed, stability, and dependability, allowing for:

• A climate for learning: This means a culture that supports continuous learning and growth for its members. In DORA research, this involves an environment where it's safe to try things, new ideas are welcome, and learning is seen as an investment. This includes encouraging working together, sharing knowledge, providing resources for ongoing learning, and fostering a space where teams can try things without fear of blame. A strong learning environment helps improve both software delivery and how the organization performs.

• Fast flow: The ability to move work smoothly and quickly from the initial idea through to delivery to the customer. DORA research points to several technical and process capabilities that help achieve fast flow, including practices like continuous delivery, breaking down work into small parts, and having a loosely connected structure. The aim is to reduce delays, minimize handoffs, and clear bottlenecks in the software development process, leading to a more efficient and predictable delivery.

• Fast feedback: The idea of setting up quick and effective feedback loops throughout the development process. This allows teams to find and address issues quickly, ensuring the software meets user needs and quality standards. DORA research shows that key capabilities for fast feedback include thorough monitoring, continuous testing, and gathering customer feedback early and often. By getting quick and clear signals, teams can make informed choices, adjust as needed, and continuously improve their products and processes.

By focusing on these capabilities, teams can find roadblocks, improve their processes, and increase the speed and quality of their software delivery. DORA helps you build a fast, stable, and dependable way to develop.

H.E.A.R.T.: Measuring how people experience your product

While DORA refines the way you deliver software, the H.E.A.R.T. framework measures the quality of the journey for people who use your product. Developed by Google's research and design teams, H.E.A.R.T. helps answer the question, "Are we building a product people find valuable and easy to use?"

It provides a set of people-centered measurements that give you a full understanding of the experience:

• Happiness: How do people feel about your product? This is usually measured with user satisfaction surveys, like Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT) or Net Promoter Score (NPS), and other comments.

• Engagement: How involved are people with your product? This can be measured by how often, how intensely, or how deeply they interact over a set period.

• Adoption: How many new people are trying your product or a specific feature? This is important for measuring growth.

• Retention: What percentage of people return over time? This is often the most important sign of how well a product fits its purpose.

• Task Success: Can people achieve their goals quickly and easily? This is measured by things like success rate, error rate, and time spent on a task.

The H.E.A.R.T. framework helps ensure you are not just shipping features, but that those features are truly helping the people who use them.

The Connection: Creating a data-driven path to improvement

The true benefit comes from connecting your DORA and H.E.A.R.T. measurements. This brings together engineering, product, and design teams with a shared language and common goals, aligning everyone around one objective—delivering a better product.

Think of it this way: DORA tells you if you're building it correctly. H.E.A.R.T. tells you if you're building the right thing.

When you look at them together, you can find helpful connections:

• Respond to people quickly: A short Lead Time for Changes (DORA) means your team can act on feedback faster. If your Engagement measurements (H.E.A.R.T.) show a new feature is confusing, a high-performing software delivery team can quickly adjust and deploy a fix. This way, you can change a negative experience into a positive one in days, not months.

• Connect stability to satisfaction: A high Change Failure Rate (DORA) will lead to more bugs and a less good experience, which can negatively affect your Happiness and Task Success measurements (H.E.A.R.T.). By working to improve your Change Failure Rate, you are directly investing in people's satisfaction.

• Build trust through resilience: When a service disruption happens, your Time to Restore Service (DORA) is more than just an operational measurement—it's a direct test of trust. A long restoration time can cause a notable drop in Retention (H.E.A.R.T.) as frustrated people look for more dependable options. By linking these two measurements, engineers can see how their recovery efforts and incident response directly protect those who use the product, and product managers gain a deeper understanding of how the underlying systems help build long-term loyalty.

This combined approach creates a bridge of data-driven understanding between teams. When engineers see the direct effect of their operational performance on how people experience the product, their work has a clearer purpose. When product managers better understand the technical abilities that influence the experience, they can create more realistic and helpful plans. This shared language and understanding aligns everyone around the main goal: delivering a product that people truly value.

Start making things better, together

If adopted alone, either of these frameworks can lead to unwanted results. For example, DORA could help you become an efficient factory of features no one likes, or H.E.A.R.T. might offer a list of improvements without a clear way to make them happen. But together, they create a strong, data-driven cycle.

Improvements in your DORA measurements create the ability to quickly act on your H.E.A.R.T. insights. Likewise, positive changes in your H.E.A.R.T. measurements confirm that your engineering efforts stay focused on what truly matters.

Start talking about this in your organization. Bring your DevOps and product leaders together and map your measurements. By connecting your delivery process to how people experience your product, you'll be on the way to not just building software faster, but building better products that succeed in the long run.