Shifting focus from engineering efficiency to engineering experience reflects a customer-centric approach and prioritizes developer experience.
Balancing broad objectives with clear focus areas is essential to prevent a development team from becoming an 'everything team' and maintain coherence.
Deep dives
Transition from Engineering Efficiency to Engineering Experience
The team at One Medical changed their team name from engineering efficiency to engineering experience to better reflect their focus on the developer experience. The decision came after observing other teams at One Medical that emphasized the user experience, aligning with the company's customer-centric approach. This shift aimed to prioritize the development experience of engineers within the organization, highlighting the importance of focusing on user experiences.
Challenges Faced During Chartering Exercise
During the team's chartering exercise, they faced challenges in bringing together individuals from various technical backgrounds into a cohesive unit. The struggle to define the team's scope and boundaries was prominent, with the risk of becoming an 'everything team.' Finding a balance between broad objectives and clear focus areas became crucial to avoid spreading efforts too thin and maintain team coherence.
Distinguishing Developer Experience and Infrastructure Teams
The podcast discusses the distinction between developer experience teams and infrastructure teams. The development experience team at One Medical occupies a middle ground between application/domain teams at the top and infrastructure/foundation teams at the bottom. Unlike infrastructure teams that focus on platforms and tools, the development experience team concentrates on enhancing the overall development experience, paving the way for smoother development processes.
Human-Centered Approach to Developer Experience
One Medical's innovative approach involves integrating a human-centered focus from their patient and clinician experience into how they view developer experiences. Drawing inspiration from patient care processes, the team aims to create a similarly empathetic and attentive environment for their developers. By mapping out the developer journey and closely observing their interactions with tools and processes, the team aims to identify inefficiencies and improve the overall experience for developers.
This week we’re joined by Jason Kennedy, Senior Engineering Manager of Developer Experience at One Medical. Jason’s team takes a uniquely customer-driven approach to improving the developer experience, and in this episode he describes their philosophy and how it works in practice. Jason explains how they shadow developers, how they run surveys, and more.
Discussion points:
(1:02) Renaming from Engineering Efficiency to Engineering Experience
(4:17) How Platform and DevEx teams differ
(5:38) How One Medical’s approach to customer experience inspires this team’s work
(7:01) Mapping out the developer journey
(11:14) Jason’s career transition from VPE to a line manager role
(14:14) Challenges some companies face with getting buy-in for a DevEx team
(16:22) Taking a customer service approach to DevEx
(19:12) Jason’s experience with DORA metrics
(22:19) Lessons learned about ownership
(24:18) The “Gemba” practice used at One Medical
(28:02) How information from the Gemba practice is stored
(30:59) Using weekly polls to surface pain points
(34:03) Tracking trends in the poll
(35:00) Using a quarterly NPS survey for overall sentiment