Developer Experience: Identifying the Problem and Justifying Investment

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In our research on developer experience, we discovered that many organizations struggle with poor developer experience due to lack of awareness and the inability to quantify the problem. Without quantification, it's hard to get investment in solving these issues. At Atlassian, significant investments have been made, with dedicated teams working on tooling and product teams given 10% of their time to address these problems. The level of investment was justified based on the identification of three categories of problems: friction, lack of autonomy, and fear of breaking things. Inspired by Dora and space, key metrics were identified as important factors to consider.

This week we’re joined by Preeti Kota, the Head of Engineering for Compass at Atlassian. Preeti walks us through Atlassian’s journey with developer experience: including how they measure DevEx, and how they drive improvements through efforts at both the organization and team levels. Preeti also talks about how this journey has led to the development of Atlassian’s newly released internal developer portal, Compass.

Mentions and links:

Learn about Compass, Atlassian’s newly released internal developer portal
Connect with Preeti on LinkedIn
Atlassian’s CTO, Rajeev Rajan, on the key to unlocking developer productivity

Discussion points:

(1:43) Where Atlassian’s journey with developer experience began
(5:36) Who is championing the focus on DevEx at Atlassian
(9:30) How the company arrived at their level of investment in DevEx
(13:47) Defining developer experience
(18:19) How the program for improving developer productivity is structured
(21:19) The Developer Productivity Champions group
(23:53) Two metrics in focus: Self-serve documentation and self-serve dependency maintenance
(25:56) How Atlassian surveys developers
(29:59) Types of projects the centralized teams tackle
(31:19) Getting buy-in for investing 10% time toward DevEx projects
(33:13) How leaders get teams to feel they have permission to invest 10% of their time toward DevEx projects
(36:19) The backstory behind Compass, Atlassian’s new product
(38:10) What Compass is, who it’s for, and how it is unique