Nils Loodin, Platform PM at Spotify, discusses unique challenges and recent changes in Spotify's platform organization. Topics include developer experience, team structure, focus of the Platform PM role, attracting PMs into Platform roles, and measuring onboarding.

Justin Wright and Matthew Dimich, leaders at Thomson Reuters, discuss the evolution of their organization's structure and approach. They cover topics such as founding the platform team, key initiatives, the value of enablement, marketing the enablement team's work, and managing requests vs proactive work.

Nathen Harvey from DORA at Google shares key findings from the State of DevOps Report. Topics include user-centric software development, impact of documentation on software delivery, reemergence of the Elite cluster, and the role of AI in software delivery.

Preeti Kota, Head of Engineering for Compass at Atlassian, discusses Atlassian's journey with developer experience and their newly released internal developer portal, Compass. They cover topics such as measuring DevEx, investments in improving developer productivity, metrics for self-serve documentation and dependency maintenance, survey programs, centralized teams, and the introduction of Atlassian Compass to solve information search for developers.

Mark Côté, Leader of the Developer Infrastructure organization at Shopify, shares insights about Shopify's developer survey program, including survey design, participation rates, and data interpretation. They discuss selecting and refining survey questions, analyzing results, and the value of targeted surveys. The podcast also explores the importance of surveys in improving developer productivity and the trust in survey data at Shopify.

Thomas Khalil, Head of Platform and SRE at Trivago, describes how the teams reporting into him are structured, the tactics they’re using to increase awareness of their work, and how they demonstrate their impact. Discussion points: (1:17) The pillars of the Central Platform organization(2:18) The organization’s focus on time to market and efficiency(3:09) The differences in developer experience between teams(4:37) Deciding whether to consolidate services(5:57) How platform, developer experience, observability, and SRE teams interact(8:40) How these problems were being tackled previously (10:09) A failed attempt at rolling out Backstage (13:48) How SRE squads are organized(15:39) How to motivate platform teams (17:23) Demonstrating the impact of the organization(18:42) How the data is collected(22:32) How they’re increasing awareness for their work (23:42) The DevEx pillar(25:46) How the DevEx roadshow will work (27:56) How DORA metrics fit into their measurement program Mentions and links: Connect with Thomas on LinkedIn

Jenny McClain, Leads R&D Team Enablement at Toast, discusses how her team enables individual teams at Toast to drive their productivity improvements. They cover topics such as team embedding, learning resources, staying connected with teams at scale, and the enablement function as a career path.

This week we’re joined by Ciera Jaspan and Collin Green, who lead the Engineering Productivity Research team at Google. Ciera and Collin have written several papers from studies they’ve conducted, and this discussion covers the insights from their research as well as their work more broadly at Google. Discussion points:(1:19) About the Engineering Productivity Research team(3:57) How the team interacts with the rest of the organization(5:58) The different backgrounds included on the team(13:11) How Google measures developer productivity(18:54) Evaluating discrepancies between qualitative and quantitative data (28:40) Google’s quarterly developer survey(32:02) Distributing survey results back to the organization (40:25) Misunderstandings about surveys(43:51) Ciera and Collin’s paper on why measuring productivity is difficult(50:35) Reductionist metrics for measuring productivity(55:26) Examples of other fields that have struggled with measurement(59:00) Google’s study on measuring technical debt(1:08:05) Human judgment in measurementMentions and links: Follow Ciera and Collin on LinkedInA Human-Centered Approach to Measuring Developer Productivity - Paper, Abi’s summaryEnabling the Study of Software Development with Cross-Tool Logs - PaperDefining, Measuring, and Managing Tech Debt - Paper, Abi’s summaryGoogle’s Goals, Signals, Metrics framework - Paper, Abi’s summary

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(37:08) How sentiment is measured and evaluated(41:44) The biggest challenges with surveys Mentions and links:Follow Jason on LinkedInListen to the podcast episode with Jasmine JamesBook about Disney: Be Our Guest

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(48:30) Being rigorous in leveraging metrics Mentions and links: Connect with Matthew and Luke on LinkedInOther podcasts mentioned: Manuel Pais; Peloton’s DevEx survey