Abi: When I became a software engineering manager, one of the problems I kind of became fascinated by was the problem of how do you measure software development? Abi: That moment has sparked a now nearly seven year journey to try and figure out this problem. And that's really the genesis of DX, the company that I've been working on for the last two years and running today. In terms of my career, about seven years ago, I transitioned from just being an individual contributor to being an engineering manager.
“Developer experience is an approach to thinking about engineering excellence and maximizing engineering performance by increasing the capacity and performance of the individuals and the team as a whole."
Abi Noda is the CEO & co-founder of DX. In this episode, Abi started by sharing what developer experience is, why it is becoming an industry trend nowadays, and the different ways of how it is being implemented in the industry. Abi explained why the traditional metrics normally used to measure developer productivity do not really work and can even provide perverse incentives. Abi then touched on the two popular researches widely known in the industry, i.e. the DORA report and SPACE framework, before then explained how DX is building on top of both researches to provide the measurements and KPIs to measure developer experience and productivity. Towards the end, Abi shared his advice on how we can start investing in improving developer experience, including when to form a dedicated team and getting the buy-in from company executives.
Listen out for:
- Career Journey - [00:06:22]
- Developer Productivity Industry Trend - [00:09:14]
- Developer Experience for Developers - [00:11:28]
- Different Names of Developer Experience - [00:13:30]
- Traditional Metrics - [00:17:15]
- DORA & SPACE - [00:21:16]
- DX Measurements - [00:26:30]
- DX KPIs - [00:32:01]
- Starting With Developer Experience - [00:36:49]
- Developer Experience Team - [00:40:49]
- Building a Case for Developer Experience - [00:43:08]
- 3 Tech Lead Wisdom - [00:46:18]
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Abi Noda’s Bio
Abi is the founder and CEO of getdx.com, which helps engineering leaders measure and improve developer experience. Abi formerly founded Pull Panda, which was acquired by GitHub.
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For episode show notes, visit techleadjournal.dev/episodes/112.
