Dylan Etkin, Founder and CEO of Sleuth, brings a wealth of experience from Atlassian to tackle the unpredictable nature of modern engineering. He discusses how Sleuth acts as an operating system for engineering, enhancing team efficiency and alignment with business goals. The conversation dives into the importance of using DORA metrics for improving software delivery, the need for transparency in development processes, and the impact of automation on productivity and team morale. Dylan also shares insights on personal growth within the tech landscape.
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Quick takeaways
Modern engineering teams struggle with unpredictability and visibility in performance metrics, delaying alignment with business objectives.
Sleuth enhances engineering operations by automating DORA metrics reporting, fostering better resource allocation and revealing process inefficiencies.
Deep dives
Challenges Facing Modern Engineering Teams
Modern engineering teams struggle with unpredictable delivery and a lack of visibility into their performance, which complicates tracking progress and identifying bottlenecks. These challenges often result in misalignment between engineering efforts and broader business objectives. Effective measurement tools have been lacking, leading to reliance on ineffective metrics such as lines of code or pull requests. By acknowledging and addressing these issues, teams can work towards more predictable outcomes and better align their activities with the goals of the organization.
Sleuth: The Operating System for Engineering
Sleuth aims to serve as an operating system for engineering, designed to align engineering practices with business needs by demystifying the engineering process. It incorporates the measurement of key metrics, particularly focusing on DORA metrics that indicate deployment frequency, change lead time, failure rate, and mean time to recovery. By automating and generating reports based on these metrics, teams can better identify bottlenecks and understand where time and resources are being allocated. This comprehensive approach allows organizations to optimize their workflows and address inefficiencies effectively.
The Importance of Team Dynamics and Developer Experience
Ensuring developer satisfaction is crucial for engineering teams, as a positive developer experience correlates with improved performance and productivity. Sleuth incorporates developer experience surveys, emphasizing the balance between quantitative metrics and qualitative feedback to create an effective team environment. This approach helps management to understand the morale and satisfaction of their teams, which can influence retention and overall success. By prioritizing team dynamics and fostering a collaborative culture, organizations can drive continuous improvement in their engineering efforts.
The Future of Sleuth and Upcoming Features
Sleuth is focused on enhancing its platform with new features that leverage existing data to improve decision-making in engineering processes. Plans include deepening the integration of collaboration tools and expanding the range of widgets to provide richer insights into engineering activities. By making it easier for teams to customize their experience through templates and integrations, Sleuth aims to facilitate smoother operational reviews and better data-driven discussions. The roadmap emphasizes making engineering metrics more actionable, enhancing team performance, and enabling organizations to achieve their strategic goals.
Modern engineering teams often face challenges with unpredictable delivery and limited visibility into their performance. This can make it difficult to track progress, identify bottlenecks, and understand how efficiently time and resources are being used. The lack of clear insights commonly prevents teams from aligning their work with broader business goals.
Sleuth is designed to be an operating system for engineering, and help teams achieve more predictable delivery and align with business needs.
Dylan Etkin is the Founder and CEO of Sleuth. Dylan is an Atlassian alum who has spent the last 15 years building dev tools with Jira, Bitbucket, and Statuspage. He joins the podcast to talk about the challenges faced by modern engineering teams and innovative strategies to overcome them.
Full Disclosure: This episode is sponsored by Sleuth.
Gregor Vand is a security-focused technologist, and is the founder and CTO of Mailpass. Previously, Gregor was a CTO across cybersecurity, cyber insurance and general software engineering companies. He has been based in Asia Pacific for almost a decade and can be found via his profile at vand.hk.