Digital Media Platform Stability Metrics

Audrey: 00:00

This is Media Endeavor. We dive into the real stories of those shaping the digital media publishing space. From editors creating content, developers making it all possible, marketers and designers handling the audience experience, to leaders driving it all forward and shaping the future. We explore how they've built and scaled their platforms, navigated industry shifts, and adapted to the ever changing digital landscape. With a focus on the intersection of content, technology, and operational strategy, we deliver actionable insights for media executives and digital publishers.

Owen: 00:41

Imagine you're running a big digital media site. You know, every second it feels slow or worse, it actually stumbles. Well, you're not just watching metrics dip, are you? You're actually losing reader trust.

Alice: 00:51

Right.

Owen: 00:51

Losing them to competitors. That that fear, that sort of platform fragility idea, it's it's very real. So the big question is how do you actually measure that? And then how do you improve it? How do you, you know, build a really solid digital platform?

Owen: 01:04

That's what we wanna dig into today.

Owen: 01:06

Yeah. Think of this deep dive as maybe a shortcut, a way to really grasp the key metrics that show if your efforts to make things more stable are genuinely working. We're gonna unpack the important stuff across performance, internal workflows, the whole development side of things, and maybe most importantly, how it all impacts you, the audience. So our mission today is to give you the insights you need to make your platform robust, you know, so it thrives even under pressure.

Alice: 01:31

That's a great way to put it because these metrics, they're not just diagnostic tools for when something breaks. Not just reactive. They're really about driving continuous improvement. They help you validate where your efforts are paying off and make sure the platform supports, well, operational excellence day to day. It's really about shifting to being proactive.

Owen: 01:51

Okay. Right. So let's unpack this then. Starting with the basics, the foundation really, performance. When we talk about a fast, reliable user experience, what are we actually measuring?

Owen: 02:02

First up is site speed. And this isn't just one simple number, is it? It's about how quickly the page loads, sure, but also how responsive it feels. Mhmm. You know, from click to fully interactive.

Owen: 02:13

You've got tools like Google Lighthouse which are great for a, a lab view, a synthetic test. But for what real users see, you absolutely need real user monitoring. GammaRoM, that captures performance from actual people out there.

Alice: 02:25

Mhmm. Different devices, different networks.

Owen: 02:27

Exactly. All that variety. Yeah. Because what looks speedy in the lab might be, well, painfully slow for someone on a weak mobile signal somewhere.

Alice: 02:34

And that REM data, the real world stuff, that's what directly ties performance back to whether users are happy or, you know, frustrated. You can optimize in a controlled setting forever, but if it doesn't work for your real audience, well, it doesn't really build that user trust, does it? Every millisecond genuinely counts there.

Owen: 02:51

Yeah. Definitely. And following right on from speed, you've got uptime and downtime. Obviously, you need those uptime percentages. But the really interesting part, I think, is mean time to recovery.

Owen: 03:01

MTTR. Mhmm. I saw this stat that elite platforms can actually restore services in under an hour during a disruption. That just sounds incredibly fast. How do they even manage that?

Alice: 03:12

Yeah. That under an hour figure, it's not just about being quick. It speaks volumes about their investment and things like automation, having response plans, prebuilt playbooks ready to go, and also, crucially, a culture where they learn from incidents without blame. It means they figured out how to limit the damage, the the blast radius of any problem. So they protect revenue, protect their reputation by bouncing back super fast.

Owen: 03:35

Right. Minimizes the impact. Okay. And the last bit for performance, error rates. We're talking specifically about things like server side errors, maybe HTTP five hundreds or failed API calls, Not just like a user finding a broken link.

Alice: 03:51

Exactly. Those point to deeper system issues.

Owen: 03:54

Catching those early helps you find those core instabilities before they really affect a lot of users. It really just boils down to measuring what matters, doesn't it? Cause with speed and errors, lost time literally means lost money or just as bad, a user clicking away annoyed.

Alice: 04:09

Absolutely.

Owen: 04:10

Okay. So we've covered the user facing side, but, you know, all this great content, these features, someone has to create them, get them published. So how do we make sure the teams doing that work are efficient? Because that efficiency or lack of it can definitely impact stability too.

Alice: 04:23

Right.

Owen: 04:23

Which brings us to workflow efficiency metrics. Things like time to publish.

Alice: 04:27

Right. How long does it take for my idea to live?

Owen: 04:30

Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. Especially measuring that after you've maybe tried to improve your internal processes.

Alice: 04:35

And then there's task completion rates. Basically, are editorial development tasks getting done on time.

Owen: 04:41

And these might feel like internal behind the scenes numbers, but they are so important. When you optimize those workflows, you get rid of bottlenecks, you improve productivity, and that directly affects how quickly you can get content out, how responsive you are. Think of it like a busy restaurant kitchen. If the cooks can't get ingredients or the stations are disorganized, the food's not getting out right no matter how good the recipe is. So these workflow metrics are about making sure the digital kitchen runs smoothly.

Owen: 05:09

That's a great analogy. Okay. So if the kitchen's running smoothly, what about the folks actually, you know, building and maintaining the restaurant itself? The platform developers. How do we ensure they're working effectively and reliably?

Owen: 05:20

This generally brings up developer agility, release quality.

Alice: 05:24

Mhmm.

Owen: 05:25

Which leads us straight into what many call the, the holy grail for dev teams, the Dora metrics. Now I suspect many listeners know Dora, but let's maybe look at them through this stability lens.

Alice: 05:36

Good idea. They're fundamental here.

Owen: 05:38

So first deployment frequency. Simply, how often are you deploying code changes? You hear about high performing teams doing it multiple times a day. What? Which is yack at it.

Owen: 05:48

Then lead time for changes. That's the time from when code is committed, like saved by the developer all the way until it's live in production. The benchmark for efficient teams is often less than a day. Now let's pause on that one. It sounds simple, less than a day, But getting from committed to live, that's where things often get stuck.

Owen: 06:08

Right? Manual testing, approvals, just, not having automated pipelines. If that less than a day feels like a huge leap, that's often a big clue about where stability work needs to happen, wouldn't you say?

Alice: 06:18

Oh, absolutely. That's spot on. What's really powerful about Dora, particularly lead time and deployment frequency, is they reflect more than just technical skill. They're really strong signals about the organization's overall health. Bottlenecks there often point to deeper process issues or even cultural hurdles, not just a tech problem.

Alice: 06:34

That's the real insight.

Owen: 06:36

Interesting. Okay. Then you've got change failure rate, CFR. What percentage of your deployments end up needing a fix or a rollback? The goal is typically aiming for, less than 15%.

Owen: 06:48

A low CFR often suggests developers feel safe deploying, you

Alice: 06:52

know, psychological safety. Yeah.

Owen: 06:53

They know failures are caught, learned from not punished. And finally, MTTR again, meantime to recovery. We mentioned it for performance, but here it's specifically about how quickly the development team can resolve incidents caused by changes. It really shows their resilience, their ability to respond when inevitably something goes wrong with the deployment.

Alice: 07:13

Exactly. These four DORA metrics together are so powerful because they measure both the speed and the quality, the reliability of development work. Focusing on them helps build that culture of continuous improvement. It means you can deliver value faster, more reliably, and just build confidence in the whole platform change process.

Owen: 07:31

Makes sense. So all this effort, better performance, smoother workflows, agile development, it all has to circle back to the main reason we do it. Right? A better experience for the audience.

Alice: 07:40

Ultimately, yes.

Owen: 07:41

And that's where audience impact metrics fit in. Things like, engagement metrics. So looking at bounce rates, how long people stay session duration, maybe conversion rates are the changes actually making users happier or more engaged. And then there's traffic handling. How does the platform hold up during big traffic spikes?

Owen: 08:01

You test this using, synthetic load testing tools, maybe like Catchpoint.

Alice: 08:06

Yeah. This is really where the rubber meets the road as they say. Your platform has to perform well under pressure. Think breaking news, a story going viral, a big launch. Keeping that user experience positive during those high stress times is critical.

Alice: 08:20

It proves the platform isn't just stable day to day, but it's genuinely scalable and reliable when counts the most.

Owen: 08:26

Right. It has to handle the peaks. So how do organizations actually get all this data, all these different metrics? That brings us to observability and the tools that enable it.

Alice: 08:34

Mhmm. The eyes and ears.

Owen: 08:36

Exactly. Your real time monitoring. Tools like Datadog, CloudWatch, Catchpoint again

Alice: 08:41

or Yeah.

Owen: 08:42

There are many. Now these tools sound amazing, like the solution to everything, but I imagine for companies just starting out, the sheer amount of data coming from them could be overwhelming. What's maybe the biggest pitfall you see when teams first adopt these kinds of observability tools?

Alice: 08:56

That's a really good question. I think the biggest mistake is focusing too much on just collecting everything, drowning in data. Yeah. Instead of first defining what questions do we actually need answers to? What actions will we take based on this data?

Alice: 09:09

It has to be about actionable insights, not just having more charts and dashboards to look at. Because these tools used right, they aren't just for reacting when something breaks. They let you be proactive. They help you anticipate issues, prevent them, and really make operational excellence a continuous reality, not just something you're aiming for.

Owen: 09:27

Okay. So pulling it all together for today's deep dive, we've journeyed through what? Five key areas of metrics. Performance first, then workflow efficiency, developer agility powered by those Dora metrics, then direct audience impact, and finally the observability tools that tie it all together. It seems like consistently tracking these different types of metrics is what really allows media organizations to see if their stability work is paying off And crucially, it helps them spot where they can optimize further.

Owen: 09:56

The end goal being that robust platform delivering great user experiences and well, operational excellence.

Alice: 10:03

Exactly. And perhaps that raises an important question for you listening right now. Thinking about your own context or maybe your organization, which of these metric categories do you think would have the single biggest impact on improving platform stability efforts and why?

Owen: 10:17

Oh, that's a great question to leave folks with. Definitely something to mull over. We hope you'll reflect on that, maybe explore how these metrics apply to your world. Keep that curiosity going. Thanks for joining us, and we'll see you on the next deep dive.

Alice: 10:29

Stay tuned for a new episode every Monday afternoon.