Bottom-Up Approach to Problem-Solving

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Initially, the focus was on solving the problem of moving away from the monolith. As funding increased, the team collaborated with product counterparts to identify pain points and work on them. This collaboration resembled running a product team within the company, conducting user research with developers in a small group. The approach was 'bottoms up,' engaging directly with the developers supported by enabling teams such as core iOS or core Android.

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On this week's episode, Abi interviews Kent Wills, Director of Engineering Effectiveness at Yelp. He shares insights into the evolution of their developer productivity efforts over the past decade. From tackling challenges with their monolithic architecture to scaling productivity initiatives for over 1,300 developers. Kent also touches on his experience in building a business case for developer productivity.

Discussion points:

(1:42) Forming the developer productivity team
(3:25) Naming the team engineering effectiveness
(4:30) Getting leadership buy-in for focusing on this work
(7:54) Managing code ownership in Yelp’s monolith
(12:23) Supporting the design system
(16:00) The business case for forming a dedicated team
(19:45) How to standardize
(23:50) How their approach to standardization might be different in another company
(27:08) Demonstrating the value of their work
(32:21) Building an insights platform
(38:47) How Yelp is using LLM’s

Mentions and Links

Connect with Kent Wills on LinkedIn
Watch Kent’s 2023 talk at Elevate
Listen to the interview with Peter Seibel (“Let 1,000 flowers bloom”)
Download the recently published benchmarks on developer productivity team headcount