Engineering Enablement by Abi Noda

You have developer productivity metrics. Now what? Feb 21, 2025

Many teams struggle to use developer productivity data effectively because they don’t know how to use it to decide what to do next. We know that data is here to help us improve, but how do you know where to look? And even then, what do you actually do to put the wheels of change in motion? Listen to this conversation with Abi Noda and Laura Tacho (CEO and CTO at DX) about data-driven management and how to take a structured, analytical approach to using data for improvement.

Mentions and Links:

Discussion points:

(0:00) Intro
(2:07) The challenge we’re seeing
(6:53) Overview on using data
(8:58) Use cases for data-engineering organizations
(15:57) Use cases for data - engineering systems teams
(21:38) Two types of metrics - Diagnostics and Improvement
(38:09) Summary

Leveraging sentiment data, driving org-wide action, and executive engagement Jan 31, 2025

In this episode, David Betts, leader of Twilio’s developer platform team, shares how Twilio leverages developer sentiment data to drive platform engineering initiatives, optimize Kubernetes adoption, and demonstrate ROI for leadership. David details Twilio’s journey from traditional metrics to sentiment-driven insights, the innovative tools his teams have built to streamline CI/CD workflows, and the strategies they use to align platform investments with organizational goals.

Mentions and links:

Find David on LinkedIn
Measuring developer productivity with the DX Core 4
Ask Your Developer by Jeff Lawson, former CEO of Twilio

Discussion points:

(0:00) Introduction
(0:49) Twilio's developer platform team
(2:03) Twilio's approach to release engineering and CD
(4:10) How they use sentiment data and telemetry metrics
(7:27) Comparing sentiment data and telemetry metrics
(10:25) How to take action on sentiment data
(13:16) What resonates with execs
(15:44) Proving DX value: sentiment, efficiency, and ROI
(19:15) Balancing quarterly and real-time developer feedback

Rethinking developer experience at T-Mobile: DevEx vs devprod, exec buy-in, and developer self-service Jan 22, 2025

Chris Chandleris a Senior Member of the Technical Staff for Developer Productivity at T-Mobile. Chris has led several major initiatives to improve developer experience including their internal developer portal, Starter Kits (a patented developer platform that predates Backstage), and Workforce Transformation Bootcamps for onboarding developers faster.

Mentions and links:

Follow Chris on LinkedIn
Measuring developer productivity with the DX Core 4
Listen to Decoder with Nilay Patel.

Discussion points:

(0:47) From developer experience to developer productivity
(7:03) Getting executive buy-in for developer productivity initiatives
(13:54) What Chris’s team is responsible for
(17:02) How they’ve built relationships with other teams
(20:57) How they built and got funding for Dev Console and Starter Kits
(27:23) Homegrown solution vs Backstage

DX Core 4: 2024 benchmarks Jan 08, 2025

In this episode, Abi and Laura dive into the 2024 DX Core 4 benchmarks, sharing insights across data from 500+ companies. They discuss what these benchmarks mean for engineering leaders, how to interpret key metrics like the Developer Experience Index, and offer advice on how to best use benchmarking data in your organization.

Mentions and Links:

DX core 4 benchmarks
Measuring developer productivity with the DX Core 4
Developer experience index (DXI)
Will Larson’s article on the Core 4 and power of benchmarking data

Discussion points:

(0:42) What benchmarks are for
(3:44) Overview of the DX Core 4 benchmarks
(6:07) PR throughput data
(11:05) Key insights related to startups and mobile teams
(14:54) Change fail rate data
(19:42) How to best use benchmarking data

DX Core 4: Framework overview, key design principles, and practical applications Dec 12, 2024

In this episode, Abi and Laura introduce the DX Core 4, a new framework designed to simplify how organizations measure developer productivity. They discuss the evolution of productivity metrics, comparing Core 4 with frameworks like DORA, SPACE, and DevEx, and emphasize its focus on speed, effectiveness, quality, and impact. They explore why each metric was chosen, the importance of balancing productivity measures with developer experience, and how Core 4 can help engineering leaders align productivity goals with broader business objectives.

Mentions and Links:

Discussion Points:

(2:42) Introduction to the DX Core 4
(3:42) Identifying the Core 4's target audience and key stakeholders
(4:38) Origins and purpose
(9:20) Building executive alignment
(14:15) Tying metrics to business value through output-oriented measures
(24:45) Defining impact
(32:42) Choosing between DORA, SPACE, and Core 4 frameworks

SPACE framework, PRs per engineer, AI research Nov 26, 2024

In this episode, Brian Houck, Applied Scientist, Developer Productivity at Microsoft, covers SPACE, DORA, and some specific metrics the developer productivity research team is finding useful. The conversation starts by comparing DORA and SPACE. Brian explains why activity metrics were included in the SPACE framework, then dives into one metric in particular: pull request throughput. Brian also describes another metric Microsoft is finding useful, and gives a preview into where his research is heading.

Mentions and links

Discussion points

(0:48) SPACE framework's growth and adoption
(3:47) Comparing DORA and SPACE
(6:30) SPACE misconceptions and common implementation challenges
(9:34) Whether PR throughput is useful
(15:13) Real-world example of using PR throughput
(21:33) Talking about metrics like PR throughput internally
(24:39) Where Brian’s research is heading

CTO buy-in, measuring sentiment, and customer focus Nov 12, 2024

Click here to view the episode transcript.
In this episode, Snowflake’s Gilad Turbahn, Head of Developer Productivity, and Amy Yuan, Director of Engineering, dive into how they elevated developer productivity to a top company priority. They discuss the pivotal role of Snowflake’s CTO, who personally invested over half his time to guide the initiative, and how leadership's hands-on involvement secured buy-in across teams. The conversation also explores the importance of collaboration between engineering and product management, and how measuring user sentiment helped them deliver meaningful, long-lasting improvements.

Mentions and links

Connect with Gilad and Amy on LinkedIn
Measuring developer productivity with the DX Core 4

Discussion Points

(0:48) The need for a shift at Snowflake
(3:59) Leadership involvement and prioritization of developer productivity
(8:56) The partnership between engineering and product managers
(20:01) From feature factory to customer outcome-focused development
(27:36) Shifting measurement focus to user sentiment and customer outcomes
(39:13) Gaining buy-in for sentiment metrics and tying them to business impact
(51:11) How Snowflake’s CTO and volunteers accelerated developer productivity improvements.

Platform team challenges, realigning on DevEx, and change management Oct 25, 2024

Click here to view the episode transcript.
In this episode, Emanuel Mueller Ramos, Head of Developer Experience at Skyscanner, discusses the evolution of his team as they transitioned from focusing on frameworks and middleware to becoming a customer-centric, impact-driven organization. Emanuel details the strategies he used to gain stakeholder buy-in, why it's crucial to rethink traditional productivity metrics, and how they made a cultural shift to prioritize developer happiness and effectiveness. This conversation highlights the steps necessary to build a developer experience function that delivers meaningful impact.

Mentions and links:

Discussion points:

(1:14) The beginning of Skyscanner's developer productivity division
(3:53) Gaining stakeholder buy-in and refocusing the teams
(5:57) Redefining success metrics for developer productivity
(8:57) Pitching the developer experience focus to leadership
(17:26) Moving from frameworks to feedback loops
(20:45) Fostering a customer-centric culture
(23:20) Defining the collaboration between platform and developer experience teams
(26:41) Choosing the right metrics for developer experience success
(31:31) Risks and challenges ahead

Exploring Developer Productivity with AI: Insights from Airbnb, GitHub, and Jumio Jul 16, 2024

Click here to view the episode transcript.
In this week's episode, Abi is joined by industry leaders Idan Gazit from GitHub, Anna Sulkina from Airbnb, and Alix Melchy from Jumio. Together, they discuss the impact of GenAI tools on developer productivity, exploring challenges in measurement and enhancement. They delve into AI's evolving role in engineering, from overcoming friction points to exploring real-world applications and the future of technology. Gain insights into how AI-driven chat assistants are reshaping workflows and the vision for coding.

Links:

How to measure GenAI adoption and impact

Timestamps:

(2:58) Challenges of Measuring AI Productivity
(6:02) Use cases for GenAI within the Airbnb developer organization
(10:26) GitHub’s process for developing and testing new GenAI tools for developers
(12:42) Driving GenAI adoption strategies at Airbnb
(14:20) Research impact and productivity gains with GenAI tools at Airbnb
(17:03) Copilot use cases surveyed among Jumio's developers
(18:46) Challenges measuring impact of AI products at GitHub
(21:33) Biggest gains of GenAI usage at Airbnb
(24:19) Future opportunities in GenAI
(30:31) Challenges in GenAI for developers

How SiriusXM revamped their platform and developer experience | Jared Wolinsky Jun 18, 2024

Click here to view the episode transcript.
In this week's episode, Abi welcomes Jared Wolinsky, Vice President of Platform Engineering at SiriusXM, to delve into the inner workings of platform engineering at SiriusXM. Jared sheds light on their innovative approach to prioritizing projects, emphasizing alignment with overarching business goals. They explore how these strategies boost developer speed and drive technological advancement within the organization.

Links:

When is the right time to establish a DevProd team report

Timestamps:

(1:39) SiriusXM's major rebuild
(4:46) Challenges of building a platform during a major product revamp
(7:22) Navigating trade-offs
(10:06) Defining the ideal developer journey at SiriusXM
(17:28) Navigating the path to a user-centric developer experience
(23:05) Collaborating with leadership to iterate and gain approval
(25:05) Balancing enablement and platform
(28:28) Implementing a data-driven prioritization framework
(34:29) Aligning projects with business goals

Developer Experience at American Express | Michelle Swartz (American Express) Jun 04, 2024

Click here to view the episode transcript'.
In this episode, Michelle Swartz, Vice president of Developer Enablement American Express, shares insights on improving developer experience. She discusses the creation of an onboarding bootcamp and the development of the AmEx Way Library for better knowledge management. Michelle explains how AmEx balances standardization and flexibility with the concept of Paved Roads. She also highlights the importance of measuring success, fostering community, and elevating the company's tech credibility.

Mentions and links

GenAI Guide

Timestamps

(5:45) Challenges of advocating for DevEx in non-tech companies
(7:43) Importance of senior leadership buy-in for DevEx
(9:58) Genesis of the DevEx organization and Jedi Council
(12:12) Transition to a dedicated DevEx function
(13:17) Formalizing investment in DevEx
(18:02) Initial efforts and learning in improving DevEx
(19:25) Using sentiment surveys to prioritize DevEx areas
(27:26) Addressing knowledge management challenges
(29:49) Balancing standardization and freedom in DevEx
(36:21) Implementing Paved Roads: evolution vs. revolution

DORA, SPACE, and DevEx: Choosing the right framework | Laura Tacho + Abi Noda May 21, 2024

Click here to view the episode transcript'.
This week’s episode is a recording from a recent event hosted by Abi Noda (CEO of DX) and Laura Tacho (CTO at DX). The episode begins with an overview of the DORA, SPACE, and DevEx frameworks, including where they overlap and common misconceptions about each. Laura and Abi discuss the advantages and drawbacks of each framework, then discuss how to choose which framework to use.

Mentions and Links:

Dora.dev

Discussion points:

2:50- DORA, SPACE, DevEx overview
10:35- Choosing which framework to use
13:15- Using DORA
22:42-Using SPACE

The science behind DORA | Derek DeBellis (Google) May 07, 2024

Click here to view the episode transcript.
In this week's episode, we welcome Derek DeBellis, lead researcher on Google's DORA team, for a deep dive into the science and methodology behind DORA's research. We explore Derek's background, his role at Google, and how DORA intersects with other research disciplines. Derek takes us through DORA's research process step by step, from defining outcomes and factors to survey design, analysis, and structural equation modeling.

Mentions and Links:

Derek DeBellis on LinkedIn
DX’s guide to measuring GenAI adoption and impact
2023 Accelerate State of DevOps Report

Discussion points:

(3:00)Derek’s transition from Microsoft to the DORA team at Google
(4:28) Derek talks about his connection to surveys
(6:16) Derek’s journey to becoming a quantitative user experience researcher
(7:48) Derek simplifies DORA
(8:19) DORA - Philosophy vs practice
(11:09) Understanding desired outcomes
(12:45) Self reported outcomes vs objective outcomes
(16:16) Derek and Abi discuss the nuances of literature review
(19:57) Derek details survey development
(27:55) Pretesting issues
(29:30) Designing surveys for other companies
(35:02) Derek simplifies model analysis and validation techniques
(38:48) Benchmarks: Balancing data limitations with method sensitivity

How Slack fully automates deploys and anomaly detection with Z-scores | Sean Mcllroy (Slack) Apr 23, 2024

Click here to view the episode transcript.
This week we’re joined by Sean Mcllroy from Slack’s Release Engineering team to learn about how they’ve fully automated their deployment process. This conversation covers Slack’s original release process, key changes Sean’s team has made, and the latest challenges they’re working on today.

Mentions and links:

Read Sean’s blog post, The Scary Thing About Deploys
Follow Sean on LinkedIn

Time Stamps:

(1:34): The Release Engineering team
(2:13): How the monolith has served Slack
(3:24): How the deployment process used to work
(6:23): The complexity of the deploy itself
(7:39): Early ideas for improving the deployment process
(9:07): Why anomaly detection is challenging
(10:32): What a Z-score is
(13:23): Managing noise with Z-scores
(16:49): Presenting this information to people that need it
(19:54): Taking humans out of the process
(23:13): Handling rollbacks
(25:27): Not overloading developers with information
(28:26): Handling large deployments

What’s up with internal developer portals? | Chris Westerhold (Thoughtworks) Apr 09, 2024

Click here to view the episode transcript.
This week’s episode is the recording of a live conversation between Abi and Chris Westerhold (Thoughtworks Head of Developer Experience). This conversation is useful for anyone early in their journey with developer portals or platforms: Abi and Chris discuss common approaches to solving these problems, pitfalls to avoid, building vs. buying, and more.

Mentions and Links

Follow Chris on LinkedIn
Watch the recording of this conversation
Watch part 2 of this conversation on the market landscape
Learn about PlatformX, DX’s product mentioned in the conversation

Time Stamps:

(3:09) Why there’s an increased interest in developer portals
(5:33) Chris’ background with dev portals
(6:37) Homegrown solutions for developer portals
(9:22) How developer portal initiatives begin
(11:24) Internal developer portal vs service catalogs and IDPs
(16:18) Mistakes companies make with developer portals
(21:05) Approaches to solving this problem
(24:28) How can developer portals drive value
(32:07) Common traps to avoid

10 years of driving developer productivity at Yelp | Kent Wills (Yelp) Mar 26, 2024

Click here to listen to the episode transcript.
On this week's episode, Abi interviews Kent Wills, Director of Engineering Effectiveness at Yelp. He shares insights into the evolution of their developer productivity efforts over the past decade. From tackling challenges with their monolithic architecture to scaling productivity initiatives for over 1,300 developers. Kent also touches on his experience in building a business case for developer productivity.

Discussion points:

(1:42) Forming the developer productivity team
(3:25) Naming the team engineering effectiveness
(4:30) Getting leadership buy-in for focusing on this work
(7:54) Managing code ownership in Yelp’s monolith
(12:23) Supporting the design system
(16:00) The business case for forming a dedicated team
(19:45) How to standardize
(23:50) How their approach to standardization might be different in another company
(27:08) Demonstrating the value of their work
(32:21) Building an insights platform
(38:47) How Yelp is using LLM’s

Mentions and Links

Connect with Kent Wills on LinkedIn
Watch Kent’s 2023 talk at Elevate
Listen to the interview with Peter Seibel (“Let 1,000 flowers bloom”)
Download the recently published benchmarks on developer productivity team headcount

How “instructional engineers” improve developer onboarding at Splunk | Gail Carmichael (Splunk) Mar 12, 2024

This week we’re joined by Gail Carmichael, Principal Instructional Engineer at Splunk. At Splunk, Gail’s team is responsible for improving developer onboarding, which they do through a multi-day learning program. Here, Gail shares how this program works and how they measure developer onboarding. The conversation also covers what instructional engineers are generally, and how Gail demonstrates the impact of her team’s work.

Discussion points:

(1:16) The Engineering Enablement & Engagement Team at Splunk
(8:01) What an Instructional Engineer is
(14:36) The developer onboarding program at Splunk
(16:05) Components of a good onboarding program
(21:11) Why having an onboarding program matters
(28:17) Measuring onboarding at Shopify (Gail’s previous company)
(31:39) Measuring developer onboarding at Splunk

Mentions and Links

Connect with Gail on LinkedIn
Download the report on Developer productivity metrics at top tech companies

Bootstrapping a developer portal | Adam Rogal (DoorDash) Feb 27, 2024

In this episode we’re joined by Adam Rogal, who leads Developer Productivity and Platform at DoorDash. Adam describes DoorDash’s journey with their internal developer portal, and gives advice for other teams looking to follow a similar path. Adam also describes how his team delivered value quickly and drove adoption for their developer platform.

Discussion points:

(1:47) Why DoorDash explored implementing a developer portal
(6:59) The initial vision for the developer portal
12:19 Funding ongoing development
16:01 Deciding what to include in the portal
19:15 Coming up with a name for the portal
20:01 Advice for interested beginners
23:55 Putting together a business case
32:32 Getting adoption for the portal
37:27 Driving initial awareness
41:29 Getting feedback from developers
48:33 What Adam would have done differently

Mentions and links:

A deep-dive on the Thoughtworks Tech Radar | Rebecca Parsons, Camilla Crispim, Erik Dörnenburg (Thoughtworks) Feb 13, 2024

In this episode, Abi has a fascinating conversation with Rebecca Parsons, ThoughtWorks's CTO, Camilla Crispim, and Erik Dörnenburg on the ThoughtWorks Tech Radar. The trio begins with an overview of Tech Radar and its history before delving into the intricate process of creating each report involving multiple teams and stakeholders. The conversation concludes with a focus on the evolution of Tech Radar's design and process and potential future changes. This episode offers Tech Radar fans an exclusive behind-the-scenes look at its history and production.

Discussion points:

1:20-An introduction to the Tech Radar
6:06-Common terms used in this episode
6:27-The origin of the Tech Radar
8:50-Problems that the Tech Radar was aiming to solve
12:23-The impact on internal decision making-a tool for driving change
14:30-The teams philosophy behind Tech Radar
18:33-What sets the Tech Radar apart
21:11-Why maintaining independence is crucial for their audience
25:08-How Tech Radar publishes their reports
29:36-A look into Thoughtworks live meeting sessions
34:51-Tech Radars Git repository
42:20-Recent changes and upcoming shifts

Mentions and links:

Measuring and rolling out AI coding assistants | Eirini Kalliamvakou (GitHub) Jan 31, 2024

This week's guest is Eirini Kalliamvakou, a staff researcher at GitHub focused on AI and developer experience. Eirini sits at the forefront of research into GitHub Copilot. Abi and Eirini discuss recent research on how AI coding assistance impacts developer productivity. They talk about how leaders should build business cases for AI tools. They also preview what's to come with AI tools and implications for how developer productivity is measured.

Discussion points:

(1:49) Overview of GitHub’s research on AI
(2:59) The research study on Copilot
(4:48) Defining and measuring productivity for this study
(7:44) Exact measures and factors studied
(8:16) Key findings from the study
(9:45) How the study was conducted
(11:17) Most surprising findings for the researchers
(14:01) The motivation for conducting a follow-up study
(15:34) How the follow-up study was conducted
(18:42) Findings from the follow-up study
(21:13) Is AI just hype?
(26:34) How to begin advocating for AI tools
(34:44) How to translate data into dollars
(37:06) How to roll out AI tools to an organization
(38:47) The impact of AI on developer experience
(43:24) Implications of AI on how we measure productivity

Mentions and links:

Measuring developer productivity at Airbnb | Christopher Sanson (Airbnb) Jan 03, 2024

Christopher Sanson is a product manager at Airbnb who is dedicated to enhancing developer productivity and tooling. Today, we learn more about Airbnb's developer productivity team and how various teams use metrics, both within and outside the organization. From there, we dive even deeper into their measurement journey, highlighting their implementation of DORA metrics and the challenges they overcame throughout the process.

Discussion points:

(2:43) Who is the developer productivity customer
(4:49) The evolution of developer productivity at Airbnb
(9:26) Approach before DORA metrics
(14:29) Getting buy-in for DORA metrics
(17:49) Planning how to deliver new metrics to the organization
(21:12) How Airbnb calculates deployment frequency
(23:29) Implementing a proof of concept
(27:20) Statistical measurement strategies and tactics
(31:11) Operationalizing developer productivity metrics
(34:26) How Airbnb reviews data
(35:41) How Airbnb uses DORA metrics

Mentions and links:

Christopher Sanson on LinkedIn
Christopher’s talk at DPE Summit
How Top Companies Measure Developer Productivity

Leading a DevEx team through transformation | Ana Petkovska (Nexthink) Dec 13, 2023

In this episode, Abi speaks with Ana Petkovska, who is currently leading the developer experience team at Nexthink. Ana takes us through her journey of leading a DevOps team that underwent multiple transformations. She explains how her team went from being a DevOps team to EngProd and eventually DevEx. Ana elaborates on her team's challenges and the reasons behind the shift in focus. She also shares how she discovered EngProd and used data from companies like Google to convince her company to invest in EngProd. Finally, Ana explains how DevEx came into the picture and changed how her team approaches and measures their work.

Discussion points:

(00:28) Creating and leading a DevOps team
(05:04) Shifting from DevOps to EngProd
(07:28) Inspiration from Google
(10:05) Building the case for EngProd
(13:42) Ratio of engineers to DevEx engineers
(15:10) Team mission and charter
(16:53) Learning about DevEx
(20:05) The difference between EngProd and DevEx
(22:32) Nexthink's focus today

Mentions and links:

Ana Petkovska on LinkedIn
Engineering Productivity @Google (Michael Bachman)

How LinkedIn defines and tracks key developer productivity metrics | Grant Jenks (LinkedIn) Dec 06, 2023

In this episode, Abi chats with Grant Jenks, Senior Staff SWE, Engineering Insights @ LinkedIn. They dive into LinkedIn's developer insights platform, iHub, and its backstory. The conversation covers qualitative versus quantitative metrics, sharing concerns about these terms and exploring their correlation. The episode wraps up with technical topics like winsorized means, thoughts on composite scores, and ways AI can benefit developer productivity teams.

(1:10) Insights in the productivity space
(7:13) LinkedIn's metrics platform, iHub
(12:52) Making metrics actionable
(15:35) Choosing the right and wrong metrics
(19:39) The difficulty of answering simple questions
(26:23) Top-down vs. bottom-up approach to metrics
(32:12) Winsorized mean and selecting measurements
(39:25) Using composite metrics
(46:57) Using AI in developer productivity

Building an internal developer platform at CVS Health | Jim Beyers (CVS Health) Nov 22, 2023

This week's episode is with Jim Beyers, VP of Engineering Enablement at CVS Health. Jim joined CVS a year ago to lead an effort to build an internal developer platform. Abi and Jim discuss how Jim joined CVS to build an internal developer platform, what brought him to the job, and how the developer experience fits into the broader transformation goals of CVS. Additionally, this episode covers building the team, defining a strategy, and how he's thinking about winning the hearts and minds across his organization.

Discussion points:

(1:15) How Jim was brought into CVS
(2:39) How DevEx aligns with CVS’s transformation initiatives
(6:06) Jim’s vision for developer experience
(8:26) Building a DevEx team and working with product managers
(15:06) Defining and communicating a DevEx strategy
(19:37) Assessing Backstage and developing a platform
(24:40) Working with developers and leaders
(27:55) Working alongside colleagues tackling similar problems
(29:26) Reporting on progress

Mentions and links:

Jim Beyers on LinkedIn
Jim’s talk on the Target Application Platform

The Platform PM role at Spotify | Nils Loodin (Spotify) Nov 15, 2023

This week we spoke with Nils Loodin, Platform Product Manager at Spotify. Nils describes how his role in platform product management works, including unique challenges, approaches, and career considerations. Nils also discusses some of the recent changes within Spotify's platform organization, including shifting teams from tech-centric to journey-centric.

Discussion points:

(1:30) How Nils came into his role
(3:59) How “developer experience” came into the picture at Spotify
(5:30) How the Platform team is structured
(8:52) Unique challenges of the Platform PM role
(12:51) Defining the Platform PM’s focus
(16:39) Staying close to their customers
(21:09) Optimal background for someone in this role
(24:43) Attracting PMs into Platform roles
(29:40) How it is that Spotify’s leadership invests in developer experience
(31:19) How a recent reorg shifted Platform’s focus
(41:29) Improving onboarding for mobile engineers
(47:33) Measuring onboarding

Mentions and links:

Connect with Nils on LinkedIn
The product management discipline in platform teams | Russ Nealis (Plaid)
Spotify’s Engineering blog

Evolving platform and enablement at Thomson Reuters | Justin Wright, Matthew Dimich (Thomson Reuters) Nov 08, 2023

This week we’re joined by Justin Wright and Matthew Dimich, who lead Platform Engineering and Engineering Enablement at Thomson Reuters. Justin and Matt give an inside look at how they’ve evolved their organization’s structure and approach over the past 8 years.

Discussion points:

(1:03) Founding the platform team
(5:49) The current organizational structure
(9:00) Key initiatives the platform organization is focused on
(12:55) The enablement function within platform
(16:44) What drove the engagement function’s growth
(19:42) The value of having an enablement function
(24:05) Marketing the enablement team’s work
(29:47) How enablement interfaces with other platform teams
(33:22) Managing the work enablement focuses on
(36:55) The balance of requests vs proactive work

Mentions and links:

Connect with Justin and Matt on LinkedIn
Manuel Pais’ Platform as a Product talk

Key findings from the 2023 State of Devops Report | Nathen Harvey (DORA at Google) Oct 25, 2023

This week’s episode dives into the DORA research program and this year’s State of DevOps Report. Nathen Harvey, who leads DORA at Google, shares the key findings from the research and what’s changed since previous reports.

Discussion points:

(1:10) What DORA focuses on
(2:17) Where the DORA metrics fit
(4:35) Introduction to user-centric software development
(8:05) Impact of user-centricity on software delivery
(9:40) Team performance vs. organizational performance
(13:50) Importance of internal documentation
(15:19) Methodology for designing surveys
(19:52) Impact of documentation on software delivery
(23:11) Reemergence of the Elite cluster
(25:55) Advice for leaders leveraging benchmarks
(28:30) Redefining MTTR
(33:45) Changing how Change Failure Rate is measured
(36:45) Impact of AI on software delivery
(41:25) Impact of code review speed

Mentions and links:

Connect with Nathen on LinkedIn
Listen to the previous episode with Nathen
Read the 2023 State of Devops Report
The DORA Quick Check
Blog post: Documentation is like sunshine
Join the DORA community
DevEx: What Actually Drives Productivity

Atlassian’s journey with developer experience | Preeti Kota (Atlassian) Oct 18, 2023

This week we’re joined by Preeti Kota, the Head of Engineering for Compass at Atlassian. Preeti walks us through Atlassian’s journey with developer experience: including how they measure DevEx, and how they drive improvements through efforts at both the organization and team levels. Preeti also talks about how this journey has led to the development of Atlassian’s newly released internal developer portal, Compass.

Mentions and links:

Learn about Compass, Atlassian’s newly released internal developer portal
Connect with Preeti on LinkedIn
Atlassian’s CTO, Rajeev Rajan, on the key to unlocking developer productivity

Discussion points:

(1:43) Where Atlassian’s journey with developer experience began
(5:36) Who is championing the focus on DevEx at Atlassian
(9:30) How the company arrived at their level of investment in DevEx
(13:47) Defining developer experience
(18:19) How the program for improving developer productivity is structured
(21:19) The Developer Productivity Champions group
(23:53) Two metrics in focus: Self-serve documentation and self-serve dependency maintenance
(25:56) How Atlassian surveys developers
(29:59) Types of projects the centralized teams tackle
(31:19) Getting buy-in for investing 10% time toward DevEx projects
(33:13) How leaders get teams to feel they have permission to invest 10% of their time toward DevEx projects
(36:19) The backstory behind Compass, Atlassian’s new product
(38:10) What Compass is, who it’s for, and how it is unique

Shopify’s developer happiness survey | Mark Côté (Shopify) Sep 27, 2023

This week we’re joined by Mark Côté, who leads the Developer Infrastructure organization at Shopify, to learn about their developer survey program. Mark shares what went into designing and running the survey, what they’ve done to drive participation rates higher, and how they interpret their data.

Mentions and links:

Follow Mark on LinkedIn
Read Shopify’s engineering blog

Discussion points:

(1:32) Starting the survey
(3:20) How the survey has evolved
(4:22) Three types of information gleaned from the survey
(7:37) Designing and running the survey
(12:28) Participation rates
(15:12) Why there's an increase of interest in the results at Shopify
(17:42) What's affecting participation rates
(23:03) Selecting survey questions
(27:01) Refining survey questions
(28:54) Survey length
(30:56) Analyzing the results
(33:31) How the data is stored and shared
(35:56) Sending targeted surveys to the right developers
(37:40) Using the results as a Developer Acceleration organization
(39:29) Confidence in the data
(41:27) The value of a developer survey

Leading platform engineering at Trivago | Thomas Khalil (Trivago) Aug 22, 2023

Thomas Khalil, Head of Platform and SRE at Trivago, describes how the teams reporting into him are structured, the tactics they’re using to increase awareness of their work, and how they demonstrate their impact.

Discussion points:

(1:17) The pillars of the Central Platform organization
(2:18) The organization’s focus on time to market and efficiency
(3:09) The differences in developer experience between teams
(4:37) Deciding whether to consolidate services
(5:57) How platform, developer experience, observability, and SRE teams interact
(8:40) How these problems were being tackled previously
(10:09) A failed attempt at rolling out Backstage
(13:48) How SRE squads are organized
(15:39) How to motivate platform teams
(17:23) Demonstrating the impact of the organization
(18:42) How the data is collected
(22:32) How they’re increasing awareness for their work
(23:42) The DevEx pillar
(25:46) How the DevEx roadshow will work
(27:56) How DORA metrics fit into their measurement program

Mentions and links:
Connect with Thomas on LinkedIn

Enabling teams to drive their own productivity improvements | Jenny McClain (Toast) Aug 16, 2023

This week’s guest is Jenny McClain, who leads R&D Team Enablement at Toast. Jenny’s team focuses on enabling individual teams at Toast to drive their own productivity improvements, and this conversation dives into how they tackle this problem.

Discussion points:

(1:19) How the R&D Enablement team works
(2:50) Why the team was formed
(4:31) The types of work the team focuses on
(7:31) Identifying the problems this team would solve
(11:23) How team embeds work
(17:19) The learning resources the team develops and maintains
(20:55) Who creates and maintains the learning resources
(23:10) How enablement stays connected with teams at scale
(25:51) How the team plans work with qualitative and quantitative measures
(29:37) Formats for sharing knowledge between teams
(33:05) How other companies can think about the enablement function
(37:40) Enablement as a career path

Mentions and links:
Follow Jenny on LinkedIn
Tuckman’s stages of group development

Working Agreements template from Steve Sobel, Director of Engineering at Toast - one of the resources featured in Toast’s Team Health Toolkit

How Google measures developer productivity | Ciera Jaspan, Collin Green (Google) Aug 02, 2023

This week we’re joined by Ciera Jaspan and Collin Green, who lead the Engineering Productivity Research team at Google. Ciera and Collin have written several papers from studies they’ve conducted, and this discussion covers the insights from their research as well as their work more broadly at Google.

Discussion points:

(1:19) About the Engineering Productivity Research team
(3:57) How the team interacts with the rest of the organization
(5:58) The different backgrounds included on the team
(13:11) How Google measures developer productivity
(18:54) Evaluating discrepancies between qualitative and quantitative data
(28:40) Google’s quarterly developer survey
(32:02) Distributing survey results back to the organization
(40:25) Misunderstandings about surveys
(43:51) Ciera and Collin’s paper on why measuring productivity is difficult
(50:35) Reductionist metrics for measuring productivity
(55:26) Examples of other fields that have struggled with measurement
(59:00) Google’s study on measuring technical debt
(1:08:05) Human judgment in measurement

Mentions and links:
Follow Ciera and Collin on LinkedIn
A Human-Centered Approach to Measuring Developer Productivity - Paper, Abi’s summary
Enabling the Study of Software Development with Cross-Tool Logs - Paper
Defining, Measuring, and Managing Tech Debt - Paper, Abi’s summary
Google’s Goals, Signals, Metrics framework - Paper, Abi’s summary

A customer service approach to improving DevEx | Jason Kennedy (One Medical) Jul 12, 2023

This week we’re joined by Jason Kennedy, Senior Engineering Manager of Developer Experience at One Medical. Jason’s team takes a uniquely customer-driven approach to improving the developer experience, and in this episode he describes their philosophy and how it works in practice. Jason explains how they shadow developers, how they run surveys, and more.

Discussion points:

(1:02) Renaming from Engineering Efficiency to Engineering Experience
(4:17) How Platform and DevEx teams differ
(5:38) How One Medical’s approach to customer experience inspires this team’s work
(7:01) Mapping out the developer journey
(11:14) Jason’s career transition from VPE to a line manager role
(14:14) Challenges some companies face with getting buy-in for a DevEx team
(16:22) Taking a customer service approach to DevEx
(19:12) Jason’s experience with DORA metrics
(22:19) Lessons learned about ownership
(24:18) The “Gemba” practice used at One Medical
(28:02) How information from the Gemba practice is stored
(30:59) Using weekly polls to surface pain points
(34:03) Tracking trends in the poll
(35:00) Using a quarterly NPS survey for overall sentiment
(37:08) How sentiment is measured and evaluated
(41:44) The biggest challenges with surveys

Mentions and links:
Follow Jason on LinkedIn
Listen to the podcast episode with Jasmine James

Book about Disney: Be Our Guest

Behind the scenes with Extend’s developer experience team | Matthew Schrepel and Luke Patterson (Extend) Jun 13, 2023

Matthew and Luke lead Extend’s Developer Experience team, a team that has approached their work in a way that is more forward-thinking than most. In this episode, they cover how they deliver impact at multiple levels of the organization, their journey with productivity metrics, and how they’ve made DevEx a C-level concern.

Discussion points:

(1:40) How the DevEx team started and where it fits at Extend
(5:08) Tradeoffs of DevEx reporting into Platform
(6:40) The mandate and tasks they focus on
(12:07) The impact of learning and development efforts
(16:33) How to drive team-level improvements
(18:44) Why developer experience is becoming more prevalent
(26:17) How they made DevEx a C-level concern
(30:27) Their journey with productivity metrics
(33:10) Advice for presenting DevEx data to executives
(34:52) The team’s experience using git metrics tools
(48:30) Being rigorous in leveraging metrics

Mentions and links:
Connect with Matthew and Luke on LinkedIn
Other podcasts mentioned: Manuel Pais; Peloton’s DevEx survey

Platform teams vs enabling teams | Manuel Pais (Team Topologies) Jun 07, 2023

Manuel Pais delves into one of the concepts covered in his book “Team Topologies”: platform and enabling work. Manuel shares how he views the strategy behind when and how to invest in platform or enabling work. This conversation also goes into each type of work in more detail, covering topics such as measuring cognitive load and where platform engineering may be heading in the future.

(2:13) How enabling teams and platform teams are different
(10:28) What it looks like for a team to own both platform and enabling work
(17:04) How to deliver enabling work in an organization
(22:28) Whether enabling teams should be temporary
(30:10) Platform team anti-patterns
(47:10) Measuring cognitive load

A close look at Peloton’s developer experience survey | Thansha Sadacharam (Peloton) May 24, 2023

Thansha Sadacharam, who leads Tech Learning and Insights at Peloton walks us through the journey of building the company’s developer experience survey. She shares what went into the survey’s design, rollout, and maintenance, as well as the different teams involved.

Discussion points:

(1:19) Where the idea for running a developer survey originated
(6:36) Advice for other leaders getting buy-in for these initiatives
(11:27) The first steps in designing the survey
(18:21) How the survey incorporated benchmarking
(20:30) Measuring developer satisfaction
(22:37) Refining the question items
(25:50) How long the survey was
(26:50) What was involved in trimming the questions
(29:28) Writing survey questions
(33:12) How much time was spent developing the survey
(35:19) The communication plan for launching the survey
(42:05) Driving participation rates
(45:21) Sampling and how often surveys are being sent
(49:21) How the information was presented
(54:10) Feeling nervous about sending out surveys

Mentions and links

Follow Thansha on LinkedIn

A better way to measure developer productivity | A special episode with Laura Tacho and Abi Noda May 16, 2023

In this episode, Abi is interviewed by Laura Tacho about the new paper he co-authored with Dr. Nicole Forsgren, Dr. Margaret-Anne Storey, and Dr. Michaela Greiler. Abi and Laura discuss the pitfalls of some of the common metrics organizations use, and how the new paper builds on prior frameworks such as DORA and SPACE to offer a new approach to measuring and improving developer productivity.

Discussion topics:

(2:20) Laura’s background
(3:59) Laura’s view on git metrics
(11:05) What developer experience (DevEx) is
(14:37) How the authors came together for this paper
(18:55) How DORA and SPACE are different
(22:38) Limitations of DORA metrics
(24:43) Employing the DORA metrics at GitHub
(27:47) What the SPACE framework is
(30:44) Whether to use DORA or SPACE or both
(33:54) Limitations of the SPACE framework
(37:29) The need for a new approach
(38:46) What the new DevEx paper solves
(40:13) The three dimensions of developer experience
(40:54) Flow state
(43:10) Feedback loops
(43:52) Cognitive load
(44:51) Why developer sentiment matters
(47:58) Using both perceptual and workflow measures
(50:59) Examples of perceptual and workflow measures
(54:05) How to collect metrics
(59:47) How other companies are measuring and improving developer experience
(01:02:56) Advice for earlier-stage or growing organizations

Resources for learning more about the DevEx framework:

Read the new paper on ACM Queue

Read Abi’s announcement about the new paper

Read how top companies measure developer productivity

Connect with Abi and Laura

Sign up for Laura’s course, Measuring Development Team Performance

Connect with Laura on LinkedIn or Twitter

Connect with Abi on LinkedIn or Twitter

The developer experience of building a database | Tara Hernandez (MongoDB, Google) May 02, 2023

Tara Hernandez, the VP of Developer Productivity at MongoDB, joins the podcast to give an inside look at what the developer experience looks like at an organization that develops a database. Here, Tara shares what it looks like to develop, test, and release changes at MongoDB, while also providing insight into how the company invests in developer productivity more broadly.

Discussion points:

(0:57) What was going on at the time Tara joined
(4:37) Tara’s perspective on the buzz of platform engineering
(7:38) What’s involved in building and testing a database
(10:11) The development environment at MongoDB
(13:14) How testing works
(16:50) What the release process looks like
(19:27) What goes into performance testing a release
(21:31) MongoDB’s investment in engineering enablement
(22:39) Takeaways from working on databases
(24:24) Affecting cultural change
(26:40) Opportunities Tara’s team identified to change culture
(29:12) Managing technical debt
(33:06) MongoDB’s culture around developer experience
(34:59) Why Evergreen CI is open source

Mentions and links:
Follow Tara on LinkedIn or Twitter
Read more about MongoDB’s “Evergreen” Continuous Integration
Visit MongoDB’s engineering blog

How teams use productivity metrics at LinkedIn | Max Kanat-Alexander (LinkedIn, Google) Apr 25, 2023

Max Kanat-Alexander, the Tech Lead for the Developer Productivity and Insights Team at LinkedIn, shares an inside look at LinkedIn’s metrics platform and how teams across the organization use it.

Discussion points:

(1:31) Why Max shares how his team is measuring productivity
(3:20) Why some teams use metrics and some don’t
(6:03) The types of metrics Max’s team focuses on
(12:59) The role of TPMs
(17:05) How Max would measure productivity if he weren’t at LinkedIn
(25:04) Surprises in how teams are using metrics at LinkedIn
(31:27) The tooling required to enable metrics for teams to use
(36:41) Qualitative versus quantitative metrics
(40:39) Measuring code quality at Google
(46:16) Whether a centralized team should own measurement

Mentions and links:
Connect with Max on LinkedIn or Twitter
Read the article, Measuring Developer Productivity and Happiness at LinkedIn
Listen to the first interview with Max and his colleague Or Michael Berlowitz: Episode 23
Abi’s blog post on the Three-Bucket Framework for Engineering Metrics

Inside Etsy’s multi-year DevEx initiative | Mike Fisher (Etsy, PayPal) Apr 18, 2023

Mike Fisher, the former CTO at Etsy, spearheaded a multi-year developer experience initiative aimed at improving developer happiness and efficiency during his time at Etsy. Here, he shares the story of that initiative, including the pillars of the program and the investment that went into it. Towards the end of the conversation, Mike also shares his perspective on measuring developer productivity.

Discussion points:

(1:31) What was happening at Etsy when Mike joined
(4:08) The scaling challenges Etsy faced
(6:08) Deciding on the term “developer experience”
(9:35) Whether developer experience is a new approach
(11:24) The pillars of Etsy’s DevEx initiative
(15:49) Converting the length of time required for this initiative
(18:11) The investment allocated to the initiative
(20:04) Talking about the ROI of devex initiatives
(22:50) Who was actually leading this work
(24:37) Etsy’s experience with platform teams
(30:42) Advice for leaders championing DevEx initiatives
(34:45) Framing the conversation about getting budget for a DevEx initiative
(37:45) How leaders can address the efficiency conversation
(42:00) Measuring productivity
(45:49) The “experiment velocity” metric

‍

Mentions and links:
Follow Mike on LinkedIn or Twitter

Subscribe to Mike’s newsletter, Fish Food for Thought

Implementing a developer portal | Karl Haworth (American Airlines) Apr 04, 2023

Karl’s team at American Airlines were early adopters of Backstage, and in this episode he shares their journey of implementing and rolling out a developer portal. He also describes two of the extensions his team has built for their portal.

Discussion points:

(1:24) Where the idea of building a developer portal came from
(7:24) What the developer experience looked like before the portal
(10:41) Initiating the project
(14:16) The decision to choose Backstage
(16:28) The V1 scope for the portal
(19:14) Getting adoption for the portal
(23:35) Defining success for the portal’s adoption
(28:04) The ideal state for how developers will use the portal
(30:56) Who should or shouldn’t invest in building a developer portal
(33:14) Custom extensions Karl’s team has developed for their portal
(37:46) What’s difficult about developing a new plugin for the backstage platform

‍

Mentions and links:
Follow Karl on LinkedIn
The Runway platform at American Airlines
Read more on the engineering blog from American Airlines

Bringing the product management discipline to platform teams | Russ Nealis (Plaid) Mar 28, 2023

As product lead, Russ Nealis has been focused on introducing the discipline of product management in the Developer Foundations organization. This episode discusses the reasons why PMs are currently uncommon in platform organizations, examples of when having a PM has been helpful, and more.

Discussion points:

(1:23) Russ’s role at Plaid
(2:49) Why platform product managers are uncommon
(3:28) Backgrounds to look for when hiring a platform PM
(4:58) Deciding whether to hire a platform PM
(6:20) Signs that bringing in a Product Manager would be beneficial
(9:16) How Russ personally became a platform PM
(12:15) Whether a platform PM is a career path
(14:55) Articulating the business impact a platform PM has
(18:56) Challenges Plaid’s platform team has faced without a PM
(19:19) Symptoms of a need for product management in an internal-facing team
(30:15) Whether Twilio had platform PMs
(31:22) Example projects where PMs have been crucial
(34:12) How the book “Ask Your Developer” influenced Twilio’s engineering culture
(36:13) Getting started with introducing a product management discipline to an organization
(38:33) Org structure and where platform PMs may report
(40:00) Career ladder for platform PM when reporting to engineering leadership
(41:20) Being product-led or technology-led
(43:14) How technical skills may help when in a platform PM role

‍

Mentions and links:
Follow Russ on LinkedIn
Episode 7 with Will Larson - related to why it’s difficult to find Platform PMs
Episode 27 with Jean-Michel Lemieux - related to the percentage of investment that should be put towards platform investments
The Build Trap by Melissa Perri
Ask Your Developer by Jeff Lawson

Intercom’s approach to a great on-call experience | Brian Scanlan (Intercom) Mar 07, 2023

In this deep-dive episode, Brian Scanlan, Principal Systems Engineer at Intercom, describes how the company’s on-call process works. He explains how the process started and key changes they’ve made over the years, including a new volunteer model, changes to compensation, and more.

Discussion points:

(1:28) How on-call started at Intercom
(10:11) Brian’s background and interest in being on-call
(14:06) Getting engineers motivated to be on-call
(16:37) Challenges Intercom saw with on-call as it grew
(19:53) Having too many people on-call
(23:20) Having alarms that aren’t useful
(26:03) Recognizing uneven workload with compensation
(27:22) Initiating changes to the on-call process
(30:08) Creating a volunteer model
(33:02) Addressing concerns that volunteers wouldn’t take action on alarms
(34:40) Equitability in a volunteer model
(36:36) Expectations of expertise for being on-call
(40:56) How volunteers sign up
(44:15) The Incident Commander role
(46:19) Using code review for changes to alarms
(50:02) On-call compensation
(52:50) Other approaches to compensating on-call
(55:08) Whether other companies should compensate on-call
(57:32) How Intercom’s on-call process compares to other companies
(1:00:46) Recent changes to the on-call process
(1:04:13) Balancing responsiveness and burnout
(1:07:12) Signals for evaluating the on-call process

‍

Mentions and links:

Follow Brian on LinkedIn or Twitter
Brian’s article: How we fixed our on call process to avoid engineer burnout
Gergely Orosz’s On-Call Compensation

How Instagram Reels manages reliability | Jack Li (Instagram, Shopify) Feb 15, 2023

Jack Li explains how his production engineering team rolled out a new incident review process, how they’ve made the case for investing in reliability, and specific tools his team has built to improve reliability.

—

Discussion points:

(1:25) How Jack became interested in reliability
(3:24) Where the Instagram Reels team fits into the broader organization
(4:05) What Jack’s team focuses on
(4:55) The role of production engineering at Instagram versus Shopify
(8:32) The essence of DevOps
(10:44) Pros and cons of having product-focused teams
(13:35) How Jack’s team defines and tracks quality
(15:46) Signals the team monitors outside of systems
(18:10) Revamping Instagram Reel’s incident management process
(19:46) Making the case for improving the incident review process
(28:10) How their incident review process works
(31:55) The roles involved in an incident review
(33:40) The value of having incident reviews
(35:55) Why leaders should be part of incident reviews
(38:34) Why Jack’s team builds tools for driving reliability goals
(40:06) The types of tools Jack’s team focuses on
(43:09) What a merge queue is and why it was built at Shopify
(51:20) Using a Slack bot for ‘failed build’ alerts
(52:32) When a company should consider implementing a merge queue

—

Mentions and links:
Follow Jack on LinkedIn
Jack’s article from his time on Shopify about their Merge Queue
Jack’s talk on Shopify’s Merge Queue at GitHub Universe 2019

A masterclass on DORA – research program, common pitfalls, and future direction | Nathen Harvey (Google) Jan 24, 2023

Nathen Harvey, who leads DORA at Google, explains what DORA is, how it has evolved in recent years, the common challenges companies face as they adopt DORA metrics, and where the program may be heading in the future.

—

Discussion points:

(1:48) What DORA is today and how it exists within Google

(3:37) The vision for Google and DORA coming together

(5:20) How the DORA research program works

(7:53) Who participates in the DORA survey

(9:28) How the industry benchmarks are identified

(11:05) How the reports have evolved over recent years

(13:55) How reliability is measured

(15:19) Why the 2022 report didn’t have an Elite category

(17:11) The new Slowing, Flowing, and Retiring clusters

(19:25) How to think about applying the benchmarks

(20:45) Challenges with how DORA metrics are used

(24:02) Why comparing teams’ DORA metrics is an antipattern

(26:18) Why ‘industry’ doesn’t matter when comparing organizations to benchmarks

(29:32) Moving beyond DORA metrics to optimize organizational performance

(30:56) Defining different DORA metrics

(36:27) Measuring deployment frequency at the team level, not the organizational level

(38:29) The capabilities: there’s more to DORA than the four metrics

(43:09) How DORA and SPACE are related

(47:58) DORA’s capabilities assessment tool

(49:26) Where DORA is heading

—

Mentions and links:

Follow Nathen on LinkedIn or Twitter

Engineering Enablement episode with Dr. Nicole Forsgren

2022 State of DevOps report

Bryan Finster’s How to Use & Abuse DORA Metrics (and Abi’s summary of the paper)

Engineering Enablement episode with Dr. Margaret-Anne Storey

Join the DORA community for discussion and events: dora.community

An inside look at the SPACE framework | Dr. Margaret-Anne Storey (co-author, SPACE) Jan 17, 2023

This week's guest is Dr. Margaret-Anne Storey, who goes by the name Peggy. Peggy is a professor of Computer Science at the University of Victoria, the Chief Scientist at DX, and co-author of the SPACE Framework, which is the topic of focus in this episode. Today’s conversation discusses what the SPACE framework is and what went into developing the metrics and categories. Peggy also shares where she sees this line of research heading next.

—

Discussion points:
(1:29) Peggy’s background
(4:01) What the SPACE framework is
(5:55) Why the researchers came together for this paper
(7:27) The process of writing this paper
(9:52) How the SPACE categories and acronym emerged
(11:50) The authors’ intention for how this framework would be received
(13:26) Finding a definition for what developer productivity is
(17:08) The metrics included in the SPACE framework
(24:48) How SPACE is different from DORA
(26:17) Why lines of code and number of pull requests were included as example metrics
(27:14) What Peggy is thinking about next

—

Mentions and links:
Where to find Peggy: Twitter, Website
The SPACE of Developer Productivity: There’s more to it than you think by Nicole Forsgren, Margaret-Anne Storey, Chandra Madilla, Thomas Zimmerman, Brian Houck, and Jenna Butler
Abi’s summary of the SPACE paper
Peggy’s talk, What Does Productivity Actually Mean for Developers?

Spotify’s failed #SquadGoals | Jeremiah Lee (Spotify, Stripe) Jan 10, 2023

This week’s guest is Jeremiah Lee, who was previously a manager at Stripe and product manager at Spotify. This conversation focuses on org structure, and specifically Jeremiah’s experience with the popular squad model from Spotify. Jeremiah provides the backstory on where the model came from, what parts of the model were a challenge, and advice for leaders either already adopting the model or considering doing so.

Discussion points:

(1:40) What the Spotify model is

(4:39) Jeremiah’s impression of the Spotify model as he joined the company

(7:29) Spotify’s progress in adopting the model as Jeremiah joined

(9:55) Challenges with matrix management

(12:02) The role of engineering managers

(14:40) What the model was designed to solve

(15:54) Good autonomy versus toxic autonomy

(18:51) How Agile coaches were used at Spotify

(21:39) Advice for teams who are struggling to implement the Spotify model

(24:50) Advice for leaders who are starting to think about org design

(27:30) How Stripe approached org structure

(30:26) How org structure affects a platform team’s work

(33:32) Tracking engineering org structures

(36:02) Why the squad model became so popular

(39:37) What the original authors may have felt about the popularity of the model

Mentions and links:

Follow Jeremiah on LinkedIn

Jeremiah’s Spotify’s Failed #SquadGoals

The original whitepaper on the Spotify model: Scaling Agile at Spotify

Team Topologies by Matthew Skelton and Manuel Pais

Essential Scrum by Kenneth S. Rubin

How much to invest in platform work | Jean-Michel Lemieux (Shopify, Atlassian) Jan 04, 2023

Jean-Michel Lemieux, former CTO of Shopify and VP of Engineering at Atlassian, explains how to advocate for investing in platform work, which projects to fund, and what distinguishes a great platform leader.

—

Discussion points:

(1:38) Jean-Michel’s definition of platform work

(6:44) Why reliability, performance, and stability do fall within platform work

(7:24) The consequences of lacking a product mindset in platform

(9:20) Why and how to advocate for investing 50% of R&D spend in platform work

(12:31) How Jean-Michel arrived at 50% as the percentage of R&D spend that should be allocated to platform

(16:09) Jean-Michel’s experiences with different levels of investment in platform work

(21:59) What percentage of platform investment should go towards keep the lights on work

(24:01) Whether the allocation changes at different company stages

(27:05) Why platform work is consistently underinvested in

(29:00) Why having a platform team could be an anti-pattern

(32:32) How to advocate for this work to leaders

(35:35) What it looks like to over-invest in platform work

(40:03) How to decide which initiatives to invest in

(47:41) Making build vs buy decisions in platform work

(49:58) What distinguishes a great platform leader

—

Mentions and links:
Follow Jean-Michel Lemieux on LinkedIn and Twitter
Abi’s post that sourced many of the questions discussed in this conversation
Jean-Michel’s book chapter on platform investments
Jean-Michel’s definition of what platform work is
The podcast episode on what Shopify expects of managers

Principles for driving adoption and platform team growth | Jonathan Biddle (Wayfair) Dec 19, 2022

Jonathan Biddle, Director of Engineering Effectiveness at Wayfair, shares the story of how his team found repeat success and subsequently grew in size and scope. He shares lessons they’ve borrowed from startups, including understanding the adoption curve and knowing your core users, and offers advice for other platform teams looking to move to the next stage.

—
Discussion points:

(01:15) How Jonathan moved into his role

(05:30) Why Platforms teams are in a position of leverage, but also ambiguity

(07:18) The initial work Jonathan’s team focused on

(10:07) Creating transactional versus recurring value

(11:36) The difference between startups and platform teams

(14:12) Expanding the team’s scope and rebranding to Developer Acceleration

(18:20) What drove the platform team’s success

(21:05) Three adoption concepts to understand

(24:41) Knowing your core customers

(27:36) Adoption metrics and feedback gathering mechanisms

(33:37) When to mandate adoption or rely on organic adoption

(38:38) A story of when adoption fell short
(45:35) Advice for how other teams can go from zero to one

—

Mentions and links:
Follow Jonathan on LinkedIn
Diffusion of Innovations by Everett M. Rogers (and the Wikipedia page for the book)
Crossing the Chasm by Geoffrey A. Moore
Let My People Go Surfing by Yvon Chouinard of Patagonia

Leading infrastructure change at scale | Ian White (DAT) Dec 13, 2022

Ian White, Director of Platform Engineering at DAT, joined the company to scale their Kubernetes-based cloud infrastructure, which has come under stress as their business has grown over the past couple years. Here he shares how he partnered with developers to learn about their challenges, how we conveyed a vision for how the company needed to evolve, and how he’s been working with development teams and business stakeholders to successfully drive change.

—

(01:00) - The challenges DAT was facing as Ian joined

(05:13) - How Ian used customer interviews to understand problems

(10:48) - The typical journey companies take as they scale their infrastructure as they grow

(16:20) - How early changes were positioned and received

(20:00) - The four personas Ian identified

(25:14) - How Ian evangelized the vision

(28:48) - Areas of pushback Ian foresees as they introduce new changes

(33:00) - Handling teams that want to stay on self-managed infrastructure instead of moving to a managed infrastructure

(41:55) - Managing business stakeholders

(45:00) - Partnering with finance

—

Where to find Ian:

Follow Ian on LinkedIn

Positioning platform work in a down market | Brian Guthrie (Orgspace, Meetup) Dec 07, 2022

Brian Guthrie, co-founder and CTO at Orgspace and former VP of Engineering at Meetup, has the unique experience of having previously decommissioned his Platform team. In this episode, Brian talks about that story openly, and shares advice for Platform teams to make sure they’re well positioned within their organizations.

Discussion points:

Brian’s background and story at Meetup - [00:02:20]
Brian’s perspective on Platform work, generally - [00:06:40]
The conversation around dissolving the Platform group - [00:12:05]
Advice for Platform groups positioning their teams - [00:16:55]
Making sure Platform groups are focused on the right problems [00:21:21]
How Platform groups can think about communicating with the business [00:23:50]
Bringing engineering teams into the planning process - [00:25:43]
Deciding to build vs buy in a down market - [00:28:40]
How developer happiness is part of positioning platform work [00:32:30]

Follow Brian:

Brian's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bguthrie/

Mentions and links:

Brian's talk, Is the optimal size of a platform team... zero?
The Future of Ops is Platform Engineering by Charity Majors
Former Shopify CTO's take on the optimal spend on platform work
Research on how developer happiness impacts productivity

A deep-dive on real-time feedback and personalized surveys | Max Kanat-Alexander, Or Michael Berlowitz (LinkedIn) Nov 30, 2022

Max Kanat-Alexander and Or Michael Berlowitz (Berlo), share how they gather both periodic and real-time feedback from developers.

Discussion points:

Overview of the listening channels used by Max and Berlo’s team - [00:00:58]
Origin story of the Developer Engagement and Insights team - [00:02:49]
Perspectives on volume metrics - [00:05:00]
How the periodic surveys work - [00:08:51]
Investment required to build the periodic surveys and real-time feedback - [00:14:20]
How results are handled - [00:15:28]
How the real-time feedback tool works - [00:21:40]
Where the idea for the real-time feedback tool came from - [00:25:15]
Building an MVP for the real-time feedback tool - [00:028:58]
Other stakeholders involved in triaging feedback - [00:35:40]
The experience developers have when encountering the real-time feedback tool - [00:37:34]
How feedback collected via surveys differs from that of the real-time feedback tool - [00:40:44]
Advice for other teams considering implementing this approach - [00:41:46]

How to define your team's scope and charter | Mark Côté (Shopify) Oct 26, 2022

Mark Côté, Director of Engineering of Developer Infrastructure at Shopify, explains an exercise the Infrastructure group went through to define their boundaries of work. He shares their areas of focus, the team’s guiding principles, how they use their developer happiness survey to decide what to prioritize, and more.

—

Discussion points:

(0:48) Mark's background

(1:43) How the Developer Acceleration org is structured

(4:43) The Infrastructure team's chart

(5:35) Three opportunities for impact

(7:49) Identifying the opportunities for impact

(10:51) Why they created a charter

(17:34) Infrastructure's guiding principles

(19:32) How they decide what to focus on

(21:44) Why they don't have product managers

(24:17) Ideas for reducing cognitive load

(29:05) Balancing customer requests with strategic roadmap items

(32:08) How Shopify's Developer Happiness survey works

(35:32) Who is involved in the Dev Happiness survey

(36:51) The survey's sampling strategy

(37:30) How the survey's results are used

(38:32) The survey's participation rate

(39:31) Steps they take after the survey

(42:52) Advice for others starting a developer acceleration team

—

Mentions and links:

Follow Mark on LinkedIn
Read blog posts written by members of Shopify's Developer Acceleration team

Dropbox's journey with developer productivity metrics | Utsav Shah (Vanta, Dropbox) Oct 12, 2022

Utsav Shah, who leads Platform at Vanta and previously led Developer Effectiveness at Dropbox, shares the story of Dropbox’s journey with measuring developer productivity. Utsav discusses what he learned about both system and survey-based measures, his opinion on the usefulness of common Git metrics, and more.

Using customer interviews to inform your roadmap | Michael Galloway (Doma, Netflix) Oct 05, 2022

Michael Galloway (Doma and ex-Netflix) describes his process for interviewing developers to understand where his team should focus. He also explains how he thinks about the strategic value of a Platform team.

Resources mentioned:

Establishing a DevEx team in a high-growth company | Willie Yao (Notion, Airbnb) Sep 28, 2022

In this episode, Willie Yao, Head of Infrastructure at Notion and former Head of Developer Infrastructure at Airbnb, provides a unique perspective on how Developer Experience teams work in hypergrowth companies. He shares how Airbnb developed a customer-first mindset internally, what it took to get Airbnb’s leadership invested in that effort, and how he’s approaching DevEx at Notion today.

A model for managing requests and complaints from developers | Jasmine James (Twitter) Sep 13, 2022

Twitter’s Developer Experience team is more mature than most. Here, Jasmine James, a Senior Engineering Manager - Developer Experience, explains how her team manages support requests, why they consider personas as part of their prioritization, and how they present the ROI of the team’s work.

From DORA to SPACE to DX - A Fireside Chat with Nicole Forsgren Sep 01, 2022

In this special episode, Dr. Nicole Forsgren, author of award-winning book Accelerate and co-author of "The SPACE of Developer Productivity", talks about her work with DORA, the inspiration behind the SPACE framework, and how she's thinking about developer experience.
Watch the on-demand fireside chat or read the announcement of Nicole joining DX as a strategic advisor.

The people side of engineering and an open conversation about Agile | Brent Strange (GoDaddy) Aug 24, 2022

Brent Strange, Director of Engineering Excellence at GoDaddy, has a unique perspective on the role of an internal enablement team because he focuses more on the people and processes instead of tooling. Here he shares his perspective on org structure, as well as the role of agile coaches and his response to some of the negative views that exist towards Agile.

Moving Slack's development experience to remote environments | Sylvestor George (Slack) Aug 10, 2022

Sylvestor George (Staff Software Engineer on Slack’s Internal Tools Team) led a project to move the entire development experience to remote environments, which was widely regarded as a “dramatically better experience”. Here he shares the full story of that project, including how they identified the problem, the solution they created, and how they convinced engineers to adopt the new workflow.

Snyk’s journey with developer experience and productivity | Crystal Hirschorn (Snyk) Aug 03, 2022

In this episode Abi Noda is joined by Crystal Hirschorn, who leads Platform Infrastructure, SRE, and Developer Experience at Snyk. In their conversation, Crystal shares the story behind the recently founded Developer experience group, including why they named the team Developer Experience, how she calculates the cost of the problems they solve, and how they partner with engineering teams.

Supporting 100,000 engineers | Max Pugliese (IBM) Jul 28, 2022

Max Pugliese, formerly the Director of Developer Experience at IBM, offers a look at what it’s like to support tens of thousands of engineers. He explains why it’s important to think about the culture and processes surrounding the tooling changes a team tries to implement, how to stay close to developers, and more.

The value of having a PM on a platform team | Jelmer Borst (Picnic Technologies) Jul 13, 2022

In this episode Abi speaks with Jelmer Borst, Product Manager for Picnic Technologies’ Platform group. Jelmer explains what the value is of having a PM in an internal-facing team, and shares his process for gathering feedback from developers to understand where they’re experiencing friction.

Common pitfalls in adopting engineering metrics | Mojtaba Hosseini (Zapier) Jul 06, 2022

In this interview, Mojtaba Hosseini (Director of Engineering at Zapier) talks about how to approach using metrics, pitfalls teams run into, and the common evolution teams go through as they adopt metrics.

Advocating for the voice of the developer | Julio Santana (Workday) Jun 29, 2022

Julio Santana from Workday shares how he thinks about the ideal scope of a Developer Experience team, getting buy-in for DX initiatives, how his team gathers feedback from developers, and more.

Why founding a DevEx team is like starting a startup | Minh Pham, Titus Stone (Ibotta) Jun 22, 2022

In this episode we’re joined by Minh Pham and Titus Stone from Ibotta’s Developer Experience team. You’ll hear their story about how the DX team came into existence, why they view a DX team as a “startup within a startup”, and their vision for what DX at Ibotta will become.

The ultimate guide on Engineering Operations | Ryan Atkins (Asana, Stripe, Dropbox) Jun 16, 2022

In this episode Abi Noda speaks with Ryan Atkins, Asana’s Head of Engineering Operations. They talk about the role of EngOps and when it’s needed, founding an EngOps team, how these teams work in large companies, and more.

Staffing infrastructure teams | Will Larson (Calm, Stripe, Uber) Jun 08, 2022

Will Larson, the CTO at Calm, covers a wide range of topics including whether Infrastructure Engineering is chronically understaffed, the role of Eng Ops, how his opinion on the “build vs buy” question has changed, his thoughts on metrics, and more.

Helpful resources:

Will's Infraeng book
Will's article, Infrastructure planning
Will's article, How to invest in infrastructure

Supporting autonomous teams | Victoria Morgan-Smith (Financial Times) May 25, 2022

Joining us for this episode is Victoria Morgan-Smith, the Director of Delivery for Engineering Enablement at the Financial Times. Victoria shares some of the tradeoffs in having an autonomous, “you build it, you run it” culture. She also shares how her group equips engineering teams with metrics, best practices, and more.

Follow Victoria on LinkedIn

What it looks like to hire Engineering Effectiveness too late | Peter Seibel (ex-Twitter) May 12, 2022

In this episode Abi talks with Peter Seibel. Peter previously was the Director of Engineering for the Democratic National Committee, and before that led Twitter’s Engineering Effectiveness (EE) team. In this interview, Peter reflects on his experience at Twitter, sharing why it’s better to invest in EE early and his vision for how EE teams can fulfill their potential.

Useful links:

Follow Peter on Twitter and LinkedIn
Read Peter's post about leading Engineering Effectiveness at Twitter: Let a 1,000 Flowers Bloom. Then Rip 999 of Them Out by the Roots

Tactics for driving service adoption | Varun Achar (Razorpay) May 04, 2022

In this episode, Varun Achar (Director of Engineering at Razorpay) explains how the Platform org has grown from a 15-person team owning everything, to 3 separate subteams. He also shares how they think about creating a culture of productivity, and some of the tactics they’ve used for increasing service adoption.

Helpful links:

Connect with Varun on LinkedIn
Read Varun's blog post, The Platform Engineer

How DoorDash’s developer productivity team prioritizes projects | Marco Chirico (DoorDash) Apr 20, 2022

In this episode, Marco Chirico shares the strategies DoorDash’s Developer Productivity group uses to prioritize their work. He also explains how the Developer Productivity group has evolved over time, and how they measure their success today.

Useful links:

Connect with Marco on LinkedIn
Read DoorDash's Engineering blog

How GitHub’s developer experience team has evolved | Liz Saling (GitHub) Apr 13, 2022

Liz Saling, Director of Engineering at GitHub, shares the story of how the Developer Experience group was founded and why GitHub paused features for a quarter to focus on making developer experience improvements.

Helpful links:

Watch Liz’s GitHub Universe talk, “Paying Down Technical Debt”
Find Liz on LinkedIn or Twitter
Read Liz’s blog at lizsaling.com
Read GitHub’s engineering blog

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