Gamba is a Japanese term for the actual place where the work is done. At medical, we encourage people on a regular basis to actually go shadow that experience. It's not just sitting in a back room thinking like, oh yeah, the customer checks in and then it goes to down and they do this. We're writing software that patients are using, but let's go see how that is actually being used.
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
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