A lot of definitions of developer experience or when it's talked about as often framed in the negative. But we're not going to tell you what is great developer experience but they can tell you what bad developer experiences. I really like the work that came out of stripe there's a really great Twitter thread by Rebecca Murphy who explained how they rolled out and how they treat developers. And so my perspective we couldn't ask for a better group of researchers to come together to try to evolve this work and move the industry forward.
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