What does MTTR mean in software engineering?

MTTR stands for Mean Time To Repair. It is the average time your team takes to fix a system failure or incident, measured from detection to full resolution. For example, if you have three incidents with repair times of 20, 30, and 25 minutes, your MTTR is 25 minutes.

How do you use MTTR in a sentence at work?

You typically use MTTR when discussing reliability or incident management. Examples: We need to reduce our MTTR for API failures. Our MTTR is currently 35 minutes. What is your team is MTTR target?

Is MTTR formal or informal?

MTTR is formal. It is used in official metrics, SLAs, performance reviews, and management discussions. However, it is so common in tech that people use it casually in standups and Slack conversations too.

How is MTTR different from MTTF?

MTTR measures repair time (how fast you fix problems), while MTTF (Mean Time To Failure) measures how long a system runs before breaking. MTTR is about response speed; MTTF is about reliability.

Why is MTTR important?

MTTR directly impacts customer experience. Shorter MTTR means less downtime and fewer lost customers. It also helps teams identify bottlenecks in incident response and justifies investments in monitoring, automation, and training.

What is a good MTTR target?

It depends on your system and business. Critical services might target 5-15 minutes, while less critical services might aim for 30-60 minutes. The best MTTR is one that aligns with your SLA and customer expectations.

MTTR meaning in tech — Speak Tech English

Commonness	5/5
Versatility	4/5
Formality	CasualFormalFormal
Spoken ↔ Written	SpokenWrittenBoth
Directness ↔ Diplomatic	DirectDiplomaticDirect
Region	US and UK

Say it like this

✓We are targeting a sub-10-minute MTTR for critical incidents.

✓Our MTTR has improved significantly since we implemented automated rollbacks.

✓Let us focus on reducing MTTR rather than just preventing failures.

Real examples

in a standup

"Our MTTR for database issues is currently 35 minutes, but we want to get it down to 15 minutes by the end of the quarter."

in a postmortem meeting

"During last night's outage, our MTTR was 22 minutes because our alerts were delayed by 8 minutes."

in a planning meeting

"If we invest in better monitoring tools, we can potentially cut our MTTR in half for API failures."

Don't say this

Handle with care. MTTR refers to repair time, not response time. Do not confuse with MTTF (mean time to failure) or MTBF (mean time between failures).

✕Our MTTR shows that we are preventing failures well.

✓Our MTTR shows how fast we can fix failures when they happen.— MTTR measures repair speed, not prevention. MTTF measures how long systems run before failing.

✕We have a low MTTR, which is bad for the business.

✓We have a high MTTR, which is bad for the business.— Lower MTTR is better because it means faster repairs. Higher MTTR means longer downtime.

✕MTTR includes the time to prevent the problem.

✓MTTR is measured from when we detect the problem until we fix it.— MTTR starts at detection and ends at resolution, not before detection.

Other forms

abbreviation

MTTR

"Our MTTR for authentication issues is 18 minutes."

noun phrase

MTTR target

"We set an MTTR target of 30 minutes for all P1 incidents."

verb phrase

reduce MTTR / improve MTTR

"We need to improve our MTTR by investing in better observability tools."

Often used with

reduce MTTRto make repair time shorter through process improvements or tooling

improve MTTRsimilar to reduce, focusing on making the metric better

MTTR targeta goal or threshold you want to achieve for repair time

MTTR metricusing MTTR as a performance measurement

average MTTRthe mean repair time across all incidents

Similar words

repair timemore informal, refers to the same concept but without the averaging

resolution timeslightly broader term that can include MTTR but may also include other resolution metrics

downtime durationrelated but focuses on user impact rather than team repair effort

Opposites

MTTF (Mean Time To Failure)MTBF (Mean Time Between Failures)uptime

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Practice

Try it

4 quick exercises

Pick the most natural phrasing

1. Your manager asks about recovery speed for database issues. What do you say?

Our MTTR for database problems is around 25 minutes.Our MTTR is 25 minutes for database problems.Database MTTR is we repair in 25 minutes.We have 25 minutes MTTR on database.

Complete the sentence

2. We should _______ our MTTR from 40 minutes to 20 minutes by implementing automated alerts.

Spot the mistake

3. Which sentence uses MTTR incorrectly?

A low MTTR is good because it means we fix problems quickly.We measured MTTR to understand how fast we respond to incidents.MTTR helps us predict when failures will happen in the future.Improving MTTR requires better incident response processes.

Rewrite naturally

4. Rewrite this in natural tech English using MTTR: The average time it takes our team to fix a broken service is about 30 minutes.

Questions

Quick poll

Have you said "mttr" in a standup this week?

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