In my new e-book ‘Network automation in 2026: building resilience, assurance and future-ready networks’, I uncover how network automation is no longer just about speed, but about reducing operational risk, strengthening compliance and stabilising services when the unexpected strikes. To meet the expectations of leadership, network automation must clearly demonstrate its ability to deliver on outcomes.
This first blog in a two-part series breaks down five automation metrics and principles I rely on to help advise leadership: practical, executive-friendly and aligned to how boards evaluate resilience, risk and customer experience.
1. Change success rate and rollback avoidance
What it is: This is the proportion of changes that complete as planned without causing incidents or requiring rollback.
Why it matters: In my experience, this is one of the fastest ways to prove to leadership that automation is about increasing safety and predictability, not just throughput.
How to improve:
- I always begin with applying pre-change validation, policy gates and standardised reference designs that map controls to threats with simple, repeatable patterns. These give teams simple, repeatable patterns that map controls to threats.
- Instrument your pipelines to capture change outcomes automatically.
- Assign clear ownership to execute each change and align teams.
What good looks like: A steady rise in successful, first-time changes and a consistent fall in rollbacks over consecutive release cycles.
2. Mean time to detect (MTTD) and mean time to repair (MTTR)
What it is: The time it takes you to detect issues and restore normal service.
Why it matters: I find that detection and recovery are very important for leadership, especially because automation and observability deliver measurable business value.
How to improve:
- Stream all of your telemetry into a single view, then use intent checks to highlight drift or policy violations and automate first line remediation where safe.
- Strengthen monitoring by tracking network performance, changes, access, compliance and security events.
What good looks like: Faster detection windows followed by runbook-driven recovery that is measured in minutes, not hours.
3. Compliance score and configuration drift
What it is: A combined indicator of how closely your estate aligns to policy and how far it strays from approved configurations.
Why it matters: Boards and auditors need confidence that controls are enforced consistently across hybrid estates.
How to improve:
- Treat policies as code and run continuous checks.
- Block non-compliant changes before they land.
- Generate audit evidence automatically to save a huge amount of time.
- Keep governance practical by setting clear standards, control owners and measurable policies.
What good looks like: A rising compliance score with drift trending down. Exceptions are documented and time-boxed.
4. Alert volume reduction
What it is: A measure of how many alerts actually correlate to meaningful incidents.
Why it matters: High alert volume hides real risk and drains team capacity.
How to improve:
- Consolidate tooling, de-duplicate at the source, only measuring what maps to user or service objectives.
- Safely automate by applying Infrastructure as Code and Policy as Code to prevent drift and speed up recovery.
What good looks like: Fewer alerts, higher signal quality and a clear link between alerts and customer impact.
5. Latency and packet loss against service objectives
What it is: End-to-end performance measured against the targets that matter most for your services.
Why it matters: User experience is the ultimate goal. Device health means little if transactions stall.
How to improve:
- Set service-level objectives (SLOs) for your priority journeys, instrument path visibility and factor network changes into performance reviews.
- Adopt Zero Trust principles to assume breach, verify access and enforce least privilege.
What good looks like: Stable or improving latency and loss for your top services, even during high change periods.
How to get started
I recommend teams start small when adopting these metrics, but take the following into consideration:
- Select two high impact metrics that you can measure today.
- Automate the collection and reporting so data is timely and trusted.
- Share a simple scorecard with trend lines and short commentary.
- Only add more metrics when the first set is stable.
How we can help
In my work with CIOs, one of the biggest challenges I see is turning network automation into something that’s measurable, governed and trusted. At CACI, we help organisations align automation with business goals, reduce operational risk and create real clarity around performance and compliance.
We bring proven architectures, practical operating models and clear measurement frameworks, so teams can track success rates, reduce configuration drift and improve incident response. We also help teams build simple, outcome focused scorecards that connect day-to-day network activity to executive priorities.
If you’d like support establishing a metrics baseline or shaping an automation roadmap around the principles in this blog, visit our Network Automation page to learn more or get in touch with our specialists.
You can also download my Network Automation in 2026 eBook for a deeper look at the frameworks and metrics that high performing organisations are using today.
In the next blog in this series, I’ll explore how assurance, observability and lifecycle management work together to make every network change safe.