CircleCI Releases Software Delivery Report
Software delivery platform CircleCI has published its 2026 State of Software Delivery report. A key finding is that top-performing engineering teams have more than doubled their throughput year-over-year. The report identifies validation at scale as a critical factor for achieving this level of performance.
- The report's findings are based on an analysis of software delivery performance across four key metrics: throughput (deploys per day), duration (how long a workflow takes), success rate, and mean time to recovery (MTTR). - In the 2024 report, which analyzed nearly 15 million data points from 22,000 teams, developer throughput saw a 10% year-over-year increase, averaging 1.68 deploys per day. - That same report found teams recovered from failures 17 minutes faster than the previous year, with an average MTTR of 57 minutes and 33 seconds, marking the first time the average beat the 60-minute benchmark. - The benchmark for elite-performing teams includes a success rate of over 90% on the default branch, workflow durations between five and ten minutes, and recovering from a failure in under an hour. - The concept of "validation at scale" refers to the use of comprehensive, automated testing integrated into the CI/CD pipeline, which allows teams to manage complex systems and receive immediate feedback on code quality. - Previous reports have highlighted that team size does not dictate performance; rather, a commitment to practices like test-driven development (TDD) is a stronger indicator of success. - Emerging practices identified as giving innovative teams an edge include platform engineering to optimize developer experience and the strategic use of AI for code generation and error resolution.
