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.

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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

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Mentions and links:

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