Engineering is often a department that is highly dependent on other departments, maybe in a more extreme way than sales can only sell to qualified leads. Sales and marketing tend to work close together, and they have similar objectives when it comes to revenue. When it comes to engineering orgs, sometimes you're working cross functionally with teams that have very different objectives but not often the what gets built. And I think for that reason the metrics become just such a point of contention because it feels quite unfair.
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