Introducing Guardrail Metrics: best-practice metrics for every release

TL;DR

• You can now set up Guardrail Metrics, a default group of best-practice metrics that are automatically attached in the creation flow of every new Guarded Release.
• You can use Metric Groups to define different sets of standard metrics for each team or use case
• Guardrail Metrics and Metric Groups help teams move faster and consistently measure the same metrics on every Guarded Release

Guardrail Metrics: a straightforward way to enforce best practices

How you release software is context-dependent, based on your product and business. Setting a consistent process helps ensure that teams measure what matters every time they release. 

That’s why we’re launching Guardrail Metrics and support for Metric Groups in Guarded Releases. Guardrail Metrics are a special Metric Group that are auto-attached to every Guarded Release as part of the creation flow, allowing engineers to follow best practices—even if they’re just getting started with LaunchDarkly. 

If you need to organize metrics for multiple teams (e.g., backend or frontend teams), you can create separate Metric Groups that can also be attached to any Guarded Release (or experiment). 

• Guardrail Metrics attach to every Guarded Release by default —no more forgotten error rates or stability checks.
• No need to reselect your metrics every time. Metric Groups make it easy to organize separate metrics for different teams.

Setting up Guardrail Metrics

Ensure you are logged in as an admin or have the CreateGuardrailMetricsGroup permission. Then navigate to the Metrics page to add metrics to your Guardrail group from the banner. You can edit this group in the Metric Groups tab.

You can create additional Metric Groups by using the Create Metric dropdown on the top right of the Metrics page:

Your always-on safety net for every release

Guardrail Metrics take the guesswork out of safer deployments by automatically attaching key metrics like error rates, latency, or conversions to every Guarded Release. Using Guardrail Metrics helps you deliver consistent release observability that enables teams to prevent incidents before they happen.

Ready to standardize and scale your release observability process? See our docs on Guardrail Metrics and get started today!