FINRA builds a culture of improvement with DORA and DevOps

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 U.S. financial broker-dealers — engaged Google consultants to help apply a metrics-driven methodology to its engineering practices.

DORA, which stands for DevOps Research and Assessment, is a popular framework that measures software delivery performance through four key metrics: deployment frequency, change lead time, change failure rate, and failed deployment recovery time.

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 mean time-to-recovery.

Over the first year of implementation, engineering teams demonstrated continuous improvement across DORA metrics, 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 measurement 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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