DevOps under the DORA lens: a portrait from the financial sector
A dissertation defended at UnB’s Applied Computing graduate program proposes a framework to assess DevOps maturity in banking teams by combining DORA metrics, document analysis and sociotechnical triangulation.
Brasília, December 3, 2025
Emanuel Galhardo de Oliveira defended, at the Applied Computing graduate program (PPCA) of the University of Brasília, a dissertation that tackles a persistent question in banks: how to tell, with evidence, how mature the DevOps practices of engineering teams really are.
Advised by Prof. Dr. George Marsicano Corrêa , from UnB’s Department of Computer Science, the researcher proposes an assessment model anchored in DORA — DevOps Research and Assessments — metrics, integrated with operational and sociotechnical evidence. The underlying question is easy to state and hard to answer: if the industry speaks DevOps in unison, why is there still no ruler capable of comparing teams operating in vastly different environments?
The work addresses this gap through a case study conducted at a large financial institution. The approach combines automated extraction of operational indicators, document analysis of internal artifacts, and semi-structured interviews with operations and engineering professionals. Qualitative triangulation was the method chosen precisely to avoid reducing DevOps maturity to context-free numbers — a common risk when metrics are adopted without considering structural and human constraints.
Results reveal consistent convergences between what the metrics show and what teams perceive: operational bottlenecks, technological limitations, and real capabilities appear at both ends of the analysis. The dissertation concludes that the integrated application of DORA metrics allows an objective characterization of the developmental stage of DevOps practices, offering concrete inputs for continuous improvement decisions — while acknowledging limitations inherent to the sector’s technological breadth.
Emanuel’s research trajectory also includes the paper Behavior-Driven Development applied in Agile Teams of a Financial Institution, published at CBSoft 2022. The work anticipates the author’s interest in engineering practices in agile teams in the financial sector, later matured in the dissertation on DevOps maturity.
The defense took place on December 11, 2025 in Brasília. The examining committee was composed of the advisor, Prof. Dr. George Marsicano Corrêa (CIC/UnB); Prof. Dr. Laerte Peotta de Melo (CIC/PPCA/UnB); and Prof. Dr. Milton Vinicius Morais de Lima (CISSA/CESAR). Prof. Dr. Edna Dias Canedo, PPCA program coordinator and co-advisor of the work, also attended the defense.
The full text — written in Portuguese — is available at the UnB Institutional Repository.
About CEDIS: The Center for Studies, Development, and Innovation in Software (CEDIS), linked to the University of Brasília, is a hub of excellence in software research and development. Learn more about Digital Transformation and Software Architecture at CEDIS.