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08 · Framework

Engineering Productivity

DORA + DevEx + SPACE — three lenses, one picture
DORAlens · 01
delivery flow
  • Deploy frequency
  • Lead time for changes
  • Change failure rate
  • MTTR
↳ How fast & safe do we ship?
DevExlens · 02
engineer experience
  • Flow state
  • Feedback loops
  • Cognitive load
↳ How does it feel to work here?
SPACElens · 03
outcome & context
  • Satisfaction & wellbeing
  • Performance
  • Activity
  • Communication
  • Efficiency & flow
↳ Are we actually productive?
Goodhart's law: optimize one counter alone — and the other two collapse. Read all three together.

Measuring engineering needs three complementary metric sets. DORA — delivery flow (deploy frequency, lead time, change failure rate, MTTR). DevEx — engineer experience (flow, feedback loops, cognitive load).

SPACE — outcome and context (Satisfaction, Performance, Activity, Communication, Efficiency). None of the three alone answers 'is the team productive' — you need all three.

The map shows which metric belongs in which lens, which are proxies vs outcomes, and how to avoid Goodhart's law by optimizing one counter at the expense of the others.

How to use this model
01

Map existing metrics across the DORA, DevEx, and SPACE lenses.

02

Separate proxy metrics from outcome metrics.

03

Check that optimizing one counter does not break the other two lenses.

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