DEVOPS

Per-Deploy Lead-Time Tracker to Datadog Metrics

On every successful GitLab production deployment, calculates lead time for changes for that deploy and ships it as a tagged custom metric to Datadog for real-time DORA monitoring…

CategoryDevOps
Enginesim
Difficultyintermediate
Triggerwebhook
Steps5
Setup~15 min

How it runs

The automated pipeline, trigger to output.

  • TriggerGitLab deployment-success webhookGitLabGitLab
  • LogicFilter to production environment only
  • ActionLook up MR and commit history for the deployGitLabGitLab
  • LogicCompute lead-time minutes and deploy count
  • OutputSubmit tagged DORA custom metrics to DatadogDatadogDatadog

What it does

This turns each production deploy into a live DORA data point. As pipelines finish, it measures how long the change took from first commit to release and streams that as a Datadog metric tagged by team and service.

When to use it

Use it when you want continuous, per-deploy DORA telemetry rather than a weekly batch — for example to alert when a team's rolling lead time drifts past an SLO, or to overlay delivery speed on incident dashboards.

How it works

  1. 1A GitLab pipeline webhook fires when a deployment job succeeds.
  2. 2A filter confirms the job targeted the production environment and ignores staging or review apps.
  3. 3An action queries the GitLab API for the merge request and commit history behind the deploy to find the first-commit timestamp.
  4. 4A compute step derives lead-time-in-minutes and a deploy-count of one for this event.
  5. 5The output step submits both as Datadog custom metrics (`dora.lead_time`, `dora.deploys`) tagged with team and service, where monitors and dashboards pick them up instantly.

Set it up

What you configure once, before turning it on.

  1. 1
    Connect GitLabRepos, MRs, pipelines, registry.
  2. 2
    Connect DatadogMetrics, traces, log search.
  3. 3
    Set each agent's modelWe leave models unset so you pick the tier — fast + cheap, or top-quality.
  4. 4
    Tune it to your dataEdit the prompts, filters, and field mappings so it matches how your team works.
  5. 5
    Test, then turn it onRun once against a sample, confirm the output, then enable the trigger.

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