The DevEx team at Extend focuses on cultural improvements over direct productivity metrics to create a more efficient and fulfilling work atmosphere for engineers.
The team aligns under platform engineering at Extend, allowing impactful work that addresses challenges affecting the entire engineering organization despite potential trade-offs.
DevEx team at Extend undertakes tactical initiatives like learning and development, infrastructure development, and schema testing to enhance workflows, boost efficiency, and facilitate smoother operations.
Deep dives
Developing a Progressive DevEx Team
The podcast episode delves into the journey of Matthew Shreppel and Luke Patterson, who lead the developer experience team at Extent. They discuss the team's inception, its mission to shape engineering culture positively, and the shift from focusing solely on developer productivity to enhancing the overall working environment. By prioritizing culture improvement over direct productivity metrics, the team aims to create a more efficient and fulfilling work atmosphere for engineers.
Organizational Structure and Team Alignment
Matthew and Luke shed light on how their team fits into the broader organizational structure at Extent. They operate under the platform engineering umbrella, reporting to the VP of platform engineering. The team's alignment with platform engineering facilitates impactful work that influences all engineers at Extent. Despite potential trade-offs, this positioning allows them to address challenges that affect the entire engineering organization.
Tactical Initiatives for Enhanced Developer Experience
The episode details the tactical initiatives undertaken by the DevEx team, including roles like learning and development, infrastructure development, and schema testing. By focusing on tasks that streamline workflows and enhance collaboration between design and engineering, the team aims to boost developer efficiency and facilitate smoother operations through strategic process changes and technological improvements.
Measuring Developer Productivity with Precision
The podcast reflects on the journey of measuring developer productivity at Extent, highlighting challenges with traditional metrics-based approaches. It explores the shift towards capturing sentiment data and how leveraging tools like the Space Framework for feedback proved more effective in aligning team initiatives with employee feedback. The importance of maintaining a human-centered approach to metrics and avoiding the pitfall of turning metrics into targets is emphasized.
Impacts of Research-Driven Approaches to Developer Experience
The episode underscores the significance of employing research-backed methodologies in enhancing developer experience. Insights from leading companies like Google and Microsoft exemplify the advantages of rigorous research in shaping productive work environments. By leveraging data-driven decisions and fostering a culture of continuous improvement founded on research, companies can elevate employee satisfaction, efficiency, and overall organizational success.
Matthew and Luke lead Extend’s Developer Experience team, a team that has approached their work in a way that is more forward-thinking than most. In this episode, they cover how they deliver impact at multiple levels of the organization, their journey with productivity metrics, and how they’ve made DevEx a C-level concern.
Discussion points:
(1:40) How the DevEx team started and where it fits at Extend
(5:08) Tradeoffs of DevEx reporting into Platform
(6:40) The mandate and tasks they focus on
(12:07) The impact of learning and development efforts
(16:33) How to drive team-level improvements
(18:44) Why developer experience is becoming more prevalent
(26:17) How they made DevEx a C-level concern
(30:27) Their journey with productivity metrics
(33:10) Advice for presenting DevEx data to executives
(34:52) The team’s experience using git metrics tools
