This chapter discusses Atlassian's journey with developer experience, starting from the appointment of their CTO in 2022. They explore the challenges faced, such as friction in the development process and lack of autonomy for teams, and how they initiated changes to address these issues. The chapter also emphasizes the importance of championing and sponsoring the focus on developer experience, as well as the investments made to improve it.
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.
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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