Metrics for everything as code

Infrastructure code coverage: The percentage of infrastructure components managed by infrastructure as code (IaC) compared to the total number. High infrastructure code coverage implies improved manageability, reproducibility, and automation capabilities for systems. Calculate by dividing the number of infrastructure components managed as code by the total number of infrastructure components and multiply by 100 to get the percentage.

Configuration drift rate: The percentage of infrastructure components drifting from their intended configuration over time. Configuration drift can introduce security vulnerabilities, performance issues, and general system instability. Implement configuration management tools, routinely run drift detection processes, and automate corrective actions to improve this metric. Monitor infrastructure configurations regularly and calculate the drift rate by dividing the number of drifted configurations by the total number of configurations and multiplying by 100 to get the percentage.

Documentation update frequency: The average frequency that documentation is updated relative to code or system changes. Stale or out-of-date documentation can lead to operational inefficiencies, onboarding issues, and system misuse. This metric can be improved by defining documentation as code, automating the release of documentation through a delivery pipeline, and prompting developers to update docs as part of the development lifecycle. Track the number of documentation changes over a set time frame and compare it to the number of system changes in that same time frame.

Time to provision infrastructure: The time taken to provision a new infrastructure component or environment using IaC. A key advantage of using code to define infrastructure is improved change lead time and deployment frequency through the reduction of inconsistent and manual infrastructure provisioning practices. Use time-stamped logs to measure the time interval between the initiation and completion of infrastructure provisioning tasks.

Mean time to recover (MTTR): The average time taken to restore a system after a failure. Ensure IaC is testable, automate infrastructure provisioning, and maintain configuration consistency across deployments. Monitor downtime incidents and compute the average recovery time over a designated period.