2026 Survey Results

How Engineering Leaders
Ship Software Today

We surveyed 22 engineering leaders (CTOs, VPs, and architects) across industries from fintech to healthcare. Here is what we found about their delivery practices.

36%
don't measure delivery metrics systematically
41%
don't optimize delivery beyond "best effort"
45%
believe they could save 10%+ on delivery costs
55%
would use a tool to optimize delivery systematically

Who Responded

22 respondents from 10 industries, ranging from early-stage startups to public companies.

Roles

CTO / VP / Director50%
Architect / Staff Eng23%
Eng Manager / Lead14%

Team Size

1–5 engineers14%
6–20 engineers36%
21–50 engineers18%
51+ engineers14%

Industries

Financial Services Technology Healthcare Energy Media Insurance Gaming Telecom Transport

The Measurement Gap

Most teams know DORA metrics exist. Few measure them consistently.

How they measure

Don't measure systematically36%
DORA metrics tool23%
Custom internal tooling18%
Manual / spreadsheets9%

How often

Never23%
Ad-hoc23%
Weekly14%
Monthly9%
Quarterly14%

Key insight: 45% of respondents never measure or only measure ad hoc, yet nearly half believe they could save 10%+ by optimising delivery. The gap between awareness and action is where the biggest gains are hiding.

Delivery Performance Snapshot

Deploy Frequency
Multiple times/day23%
Daily to weekly32%
Biweekly or less32%
Less than monthly14%
Lead Time
Under 15 min18%
15–60 min14%
1–24 hours18%
1–7 days23%
More than a week9%
Change Failure Rate
Less than 1%18%
1–5%36%
5–15%18%
More than 30%9%

What Frustrates Them Most

In their own words: the single most frustrating thing about their deployment process.

"Siloed teams (devs, ops, security) that don't talk when selecting tools and prevent a fully streamlined systematic approach to software delivery."
"Despite knowledge of DORA and tools, the team aren't measuring lead time and don't have any focus on it."
"The market demands a speed that doesn't allow us to do things well."
"Deployments distributed across far too many platforms, creating cognitive overhead, reduced performance, and reduced velocity."
"Not being allowed to fix it. Technical founder is emotionally attached to a human-in-the-loop deployment."
"Mix of legacy and modern tooling."

Close the gap between awareness and action

Positron Flux helps you measure, understand, and systematically improve your delivery performance, so you can turn that 10-20% savings potential into reality.

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