Operations | Monitoring | ITSM | DevOps | Cloud

If you've adopted DORA metrics as your standard for measuring DevOps performance, stop us if this hypothetical scenario doesn't sound familiar. You check your DORA dashboard during a lunch break, full of optimism that you’ll get a clear picture of your team’s performance. Instead, you leave with nothing but a sandwich in your stomach and the nagging feeling that you’re focusing too much on the results of the game instead of the people that are playing it.

For most engineering leaders, getting a DORA dashboard up and running feels like a huge win. You can finally track performance, compare it to industry benchmarks, and report on your progress. But then a nagging question settles in: how do you actually make the numbers go up? That frustration points to a common gap between the dashboard and the daily engineering practices that drive those outcomes.

There are a lot of ways to gauge the performance of your DevOps teams and the health of your software, but DORA metrics have emerged as the industry standard. If you aren’t familiar with DORA metrics, take a few minutes to read this comprehensive guide to understanding DORA metrics. DORA metrics were designed to offer a high-level, long-term view of how your teams are performing.

AI assistants have transformed how developers work. And now coupled with the Cortex MCP that connects AI assistants directly to live service data, ownership records, and organizational standards, developers can get accurate, context-rich answers about their services and standards right in their IDE. → Tips and prompts for developers using the Cortex MCP But what about engineering leaders?! Your opportunities with AI assistants extend far beyond code generation.

AI coding assistants are already transforming how developers work, helping them write code faster, answer tough questions, and automate repetitive tasks. It’s exciting, it’s powerful… and it’s just the beginning. Cortex MCP connects your AI assistant directly to your live service data, ownership, and organizational standards so it can give accurate, context-rich answers right in your IDE.

Cortex gives engineering teams full visibility and control over their services, from ownership and standards to service history and production readiness. Our goal is to help teams stay aligned and move faster so they are ready for whatever is ahead. The reality for any engineering team is that developers spend the most of their time in their IDE, not their IDP. And while developers love the context Cortex provides, they don’t love context switching.

Developer productivity is top of mind for all engineering organizations. As AI accelerates software development, leaders face a fundamental question: Are we truly building faster, or just building more? And more importantly, are we building the right things, and building them well? In this new era, speed alone isn’t enough. High-impact teams must ensure their work aligns with customer value and is delivered with exceptional quality.