Manuel Pais delves into one of the concepts covered in his book “Team Topologies”: platform and enabling work. Manuel shares how he views the strategy behind when and how to invest in platform or enabling work. This conversation also goes into each type of work in more detail, covering topics such as measuring cognitive load and where platform engineering may be heading in the future. (2:13) How enabling teams and platform teams are different (10:28) What it looks like for a team to own both platform and enabling work (17:04) How to deliver enabling work in an organization(22:28) Whether enabling teams should be temporary(30:10) Platform team anti-patterns(47:10) Measuring cognitive load

Thansha Sadacharam, who leads Tech Learning and Insights at Peloton walks us through the journey of building the company’s developer experience survey. She shares what went into the survey’s design, rollout, and maintenance, as well as the different teams involved.Discussion points: (1:19) Where the idea for running a developer survey originated(6:36) Advice for other leaders getting buy-in for these initiatives(11:27) The first steps in designing the survey(18:21) How the survey incorporated benchmarking(20:30) Measuring developer satisfaction(22:37) Refining the question items (25:50) How long the survey was(26:50) What was involved in trimming the questions (29:28) Writing survey questions (33:12) How much time was spent developing the survey(35:19) The communication plan for launching the survey(42:05) Driving participation rates  (45:21) Sampling and how often surveys are being sent (49:21) How the information was presented (54:10) Feeling nervous about sending out surveys Mentions and linksFollow Thansha on LinkedIn

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 organizationsResources for learning more about the DevEx framework:Read the new paper on ACM QueueRead 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 PerformanceConnect with Laura on LinkedIn or TwitterConnect with Abi on LinkedIn or Twitter

Tara Hernandez, the VP of Developer Productivity at MongoDB, joins the podcast to give an inside look at what the developer experience looks like at an organization that develops a database. Here, Tara shares what it looks like to develop, test, and release changes at MongoDB, while also providing insight into how the company invests in developer productivity more broadly. Discussion points: (0:57) What was going on at the time Tara joined (4:37) Tara’s perspective on the buzz of platform engineering(7:38) What’s involved in building and testing a database(10:11) The development environment at MongoDB(13:14) How testing works(16:50) What the release process looks like(19:27) What goes into performance testing a release(21:31) MongoDB’s investment in engineering enablement (22:39) Takeaways from working on databases(24:24) Affecting cultural change(26:40) Opportunities Tara’s team identified to change culture(29:12) Managing technical debt(33:06) MongoDB’s culture around developer experience (34:59) Why Evergreen CI is open sourceMentions and links: Follow Tara on LinkedIn or TwitterRead more about MongoDB’s “Evergreen” Continuous Integration Visit MongoDB’s engineering blog 

Max Kanat-Alexander, the Tech Lead for the Developer Productivity and Insights Team at LinkedIn, shares an inside look at LinkedIn’s metrics platform and how teams across the organization use it. Discussion points: (1:31) Why Max shares how his team is measuring productivity(3:20) Why some teams use metrics and some don’t (6:03) The types of metrics Max’s team focuses on(12:59) The role of TPMs(17:05) How Max would measure productivity if he weren’t at LinkedIn(25:04) Surprises in how teams are using metrics at LinkedIn(31:27) The tooling required to enable metrics for teams to use(36:41) Qualitative versus quantitative metrics(40:39) Measuring code quality at Google (46:16) Whether a centralized team should own measurementMentions and links:Connect with Max on LinkedIn or TwitterRead the article, Measuring Developer Productivity and Happiness at LinkedInListen to the first interview with Max and his colleague Or Michael Berlowitz: Episode 23Abi’s blog post on the Three-Bucket Framework for Engineering Metrics

Mike Fisher, the former CTO at Etsy, spearheaded a multi-year developer experience initiative aimed at improving developer happiness and efficiency during his time at Etsy. Here, he shares the story of that initiative, including the pillars of the program and the investment that went into it. Towards the end of the conversation, Mike also shares his perspective on measuring developer productivity. Discussion points:(1:31) What was happening at Etsy when Mike joined (4:08) The scaling challenges Etsy faced(6:08) Deciding on the term “developer experience” (9:35) Whether developer experience is a new approach(11:24) The pillars of Etsy’s DevEx initiative (15:49) Converting the length of time required for this initiative(18:11) The investment allocated to the initiative (20:04) Talking about the ROI of devex initiatives (22:50) Who was actually leading this work(24:37) Etsy’s experience with platform teams (30:42) Advice for leaders championing DevEx initiatives(34:45) Framing the conversation about getting budget for a DevEx initiative(37:45) How leaders can address the efficiency conversation(42:00) Measuring productivity (45:49) The “experiment velocity” metric ‍Mentions and links:Follow Mike on LinkedIn or TwitterSubscribe to Mike’s newsletter, Fish Food for Thought

Karl’s team at American Airlines were early adopters of Backstage, and in this episode he shares their journey of implementing and rolling out a developer portal. He also describes two of the extensions his team has built for their portal. Discussion points:(1:24) Where the idea of building a developer portal came from(7:24) What the developer experience looked like before the portal (10:41) Initiating the project(14:16) The decision to choose Backstage (16:28) The V1 scope for the portal (19:14) Getting adoption for the portal(23:35) Defining success for the portal’s adoption (28:04) The ideal state for how developers will use the portal(30:56) Who should or shouldn’t invest in building a developer portal (33:14) Custom extensions Karl’s team has developed for their portal(37:46) What’s difficult about developing a new plugin for the backstage platform‍Mentions and links:Follow Karl on LinkedInThe Runway platform at American Airlines Read more on the engineering blog from American Airlines 

As product lead, Russ Nealis has been focused on introducing the discipline of product management in the Developer Foundations organization. This episode discusses the reasons why PMs are currently uncommon in platform organizations, examples of when having a PM has been helpful, and more. Discussion points:(1:23) Russ’s role at Plaid (2:49) Why platform product managers are uncommon(3:28) Backgrounds to look for when hiring a platform PM(4:58) Deciding whether to hire a platform PM(6:20) Signs that bringing in a Product Manager would be beneficial(9:16) How Russ personally became a platform PM(12:15) Whether a platform PM is a career path (14:55) Articulating the business impact a platform PM has(18:56) Challenges Plaid’s platform team has faced without a PM  (19:19) Symptoms of a need for product management in an internal-facing team(30:15) Whether Twilio had platform PMs  (31:22) Example projects where PMs have been crucial(34:12) How the book “Ask Your Developer” influenced Twilio’s engineering culture (36:13) Getting started with introducing a product management discipline to an organization (38:33) Org structure and where platform PMs may report (40:00) Career ladder for platform PM when reporting to engineering leadership(41:20) Being product-led or technology-led(43:14) How technical skills may help when in a platform PM role‍Mentions and links: Follow Russ on LinkedIn Episode 7 with Will Larson - related to why it’s difficult to find Platform PMsEpisode 27 with Jean-Michel Lemieux - related to the percentage of investment that should be put towards platform investments The Build Trap by Melissa PerriAsk Your Developer by Jeff Lawson

In this deep-dive episode, Brian Scanlan, Principal Systems Engineer at Intercom, describes how the company’s on-call process works. He explains how the process started and key changes they’ve made over the years, including a new volunteer model, changes to compensation, and more.Discussion points:(1:28) How on-call started at Intercom(10:11) Brian’s background and interest in being on-call(14:06) Getting engineers motivated to be on-call (16:37) Challenges Intercom saw with on-call as it grew(19:53) Having too many people on-call(23:20) Having alarms that aren’t useful (26:03) Recognizing uneven workload with compensation(27:22) Initiating changes to the on-call process (30:08) Creating a volunteer model(33:02) Addressing concerns that volunteers wouldn’t take action on alarms (34:40) Equitability in a volunteer model(36:36) Expectations of expertise for being on-call(40:56) How volunteers sign up (44:15) The Incident Commander role (46:19) Using code review for changes to alarms(50:02) On-call compensation (52:50) Other approaches to compensating on-call(55:08) Whether other companies should compensate on-call(57:32) How Intercom’s on-call process compares to other companies (1:00:46) Recent changes to the on-call process(1:04:13) Balancing responsiveness and burnout (1:07:12) Signals for evaluating the on-call process ‍Mentions and links: Follow Brian on LinkedIn or Twitter Brian’s article: How we fixed our on call process to avoid engineer burnoutGergely Orosz’s On-Call Compensation 

Jack Li explains how his production engineering team rolled out a new incident review process, how they’ve made the case for investing in reliability, and specific tools his team has built to improve reliability.—Discussion points:(1:25) How Jack became interested in reliability (3:24) Where the Instagram Reels team fits into the broader organization(4:05) What Jack’s team focuses on(4:55) The role of production engineering at Instagram versus Shopify (8:32) The essence of DevOps(10:44) Pros and cons of having product-focused teams(13:35) How Jack’s team defines and tracks quality(15:46) Signals the team monitors outside of systems (18:10) Revamping Instagram Reel’s incident management process(19:46) Making the case for improving the incident review process(28:10) How their incident review process works(31:55) The roles involved in an incident review (33:40) The value of having incident reviews(35:55) Why leaders should be part of incident reviews (38:34) Why Jack’s team builds tools for driving reliability goals(40:06) The types of tools Jack’s team focuses on (43:09) What a merge queue is and why it was built at Shopify(51:20) Using a Slack bot for ‘failed build’ alerts(52:32) When a company should consider implementing a merge queue—Mentions and links: Follow Jack on LinkedIn Jack’s article from his time on Shopify about their Merge QueueJack’s talk on Shopify’s Merge Queue at GitHub Universe 2019