Explorez tous les épisodes du podcast Engineering Enablement by DX
Plongez dans la liste complète des épisodes de Engineering Enablement by DX. Chaque épisode est catalogué accompagné de descriptions détaillées, ce qui facilite la recherche et l'exploration de sujets spécifiques. Suivez tous les épisodes de votre podcast préféré et ne manquez aucun contenu pertinent.
Rows per page:
50
1–50 of 111
Titre
Date
Durée
The AI adoption playbook: Lessons from Microsoft's internal strategy
18 Apr 2025
00:29:10
Brian Houck from Microsoft returns to discuss effective strategies for driving AI adoption among software development teams. Brian shares his insights into why the immense hype around AI often serves as a barrier rather than a facilitator for adoption, citing skepticism and inflated expectations among developers. He highlights the most effective approaches, including leadership advocacy, structured training, and cultivating local champions within teams to demonstrate practical use cases.
Brian emphasizes the importance of honest communication about AI's capabilities, avoiding over-promises, and ensuring that teams clearly understand what AI tools are best suited for. Additionally, he discusses common pitfalls, such as placing excessive pressure on individuals through leaderboards and unrealistic mandates, and stresses the importance of framing AI as an assistant rather than a replacement for developer skills. Finally, Brian explores the role of data and metrics in adoption efforts, offering practical advice on how to measure usage effectively and sustainably.
Gene Kim on developer experience and AI engineering
04 Apr 2025
00:38:40
In this episode, we’re joined by author and researcher Gene Kim for a wide-ranging conversation on the evolution of DevOps, developer experience, and the systems thinking behind organizational performance. Gene shares insights from his latest work on socio-technical systems, the role of developer platforms, and how AI is reshaping the shape of engineering teams. We also explore the coordination challenges facing modern organizations, the limits of tooling, and the deeper principles that unite DevOps, lean, and platform engineering.
(2:12) The evolving landscape of developer experience
(10:34) Option Value theory, and how GenAI helps developers
(13:45) The aim of developer experience work
(19:59) The significance of layer three changes
(23:23) Framing developer experience
(32:12) GenAI’s part in ‘the death of the stubborn developer”
(36:05) GenAI’s implications on the workforce
(38:05) Where Gene’s work is heading
Getting Airbnb’s Platform team to drive more impact: Reorganizing, defining strategy, and metrics
07 Mar 2025
00:32:58
In this episode, Airbnb Developer Productivity leader Anna Sulkina shares the story of how her team transformed itself and became more impactful within the organization. She starts by describing how the team previously operated, where teams were delivering but felt they needed more clarity and alignment across teams. Then, the conversation digs into the key changes they made, including reorganizing the team, clarifying team roles, defining strategy, and improving their measurement systems.
For A deeper look into how our Engineers and Data Scientists build a world of belonging, check out The Airbnb Tech Blog
Discussion points:
(0:00) Intro
(1:40) Skills that make a great developer productivity leader
(4:36) Challenges in how the team operated previously
(10:49) Changing the platform org’s focus and structure
(16:04) Clarifying roles for EM’s, PM’s, and tech leads
(20:22) How Airbnb defined its infrastructure org’s strategy
(28:23) Improvements they’ve seen to developer experience satisfaction
(32:13) The evolution of Airbnb’s developer experience survey
You have developer productivity metrics. Now what?
22 Feb 2025
00:39:09
Many teams struggle to use developer productivity data effectively because they don’t know how to use it to decide what to do next. We know that data is here to help us improve, but how do you know where to look? And even then, what do you actually do to put the wheels of change in motion? Listen to this conversation with Abi Noda and Laura Tacho (CEO and CTO at DX) about data-driven management and how to take a structured, analytical approach to using data for improvement.
(8:58) Use cases for data-engineering organizations
(15:57) Use cases for data - engineering systems teams
(21:38) Two types of metrics - Diagnostics and Improvement
(38:09) Summary
Leveraging sentiment data, driving org-wide action, and executive engagement
31 Jan 2025
00:24:33
In this episode, David Betts, leader of Twilio’s developer platform team, shares how Twilio leverages developer sentiment data to drive platform engineering initiatives, optimize Kubernetes adoption, and demonstrate ROI for leadership. David details Twilio’s journey from traditional metrics to sentiment-driven insights, the innovative tools his teams have built to streamline CI/CD workflows, and the strategies they use to align platform investments with organizational goals.
(2:03) Twilio's approach to release engineering and CD
(4:10) How they use sentiment data and telemetry metrics
(7:27) Comparing sentiment data and telemetry metrics
(10:25) How to take action on sentiment data
(13:16) What resonates with execs
(15:44) Proving DX value: sentiment, efficiency, and ROI
(19:15) Balancing quarterly and real-time developer feedback
Rethinking developer experience at T-Mobile: DevEx vs devprod, exec buy-in, and developer self-service
22 Jan 2025
00:31:56
Chris Chandleris a Senior Member of the Technical Staff for Developer Productivity at T-Mobile. Chris has led several major initiatives to improve developer experience including their internal developer portal, Starter Kits (a patented developer platform that predates Backstage), and Workforce Transformation Bootcamps for onboarding developers faster.
(0:47) From developer experience to developer productivity
(7:03) Getting executive buy-in for developer productivity initiatives
(13:54) What Chris’s team is responsible for
(17:02) How they’ve built relationships with other teams
(20:57) How they built and got funding for Dev Console and Starter Kits
(27:23) Homegrown solution vs Backstage
DX Core 4: 2024 benchmarks
08 Jan 2025
00:28:20
In this episode, Abi and Laura dive into the 2024 DX Core 4 benchmarks, sharing insights across data from 500+ companies. They discuss what these benchmarks mean for engineering leaders, how to interpret key metrics like the Developer Experience Index, and offer advice on how to best use benchmarking data in your organization.
In this episode, Abi and Laura introduce the DX Core 4, a new framework designed to simplify how organizations measure developer productivity. They discuss the evolution of productivity metrics, comparing Core 4 with frameworks like DORA, SPACE, and DevEx, and emphasize its focus on speed, effectiveness, quality, and impact. They explore why each metric was chosen, the importance of balancing productivity measures with developer experience, and how Core 4 can help engineering leaders align productivity goals with broader business objectives.
(3:42) Identifying the Core 4's target audience and key stakeholders
(4:38) Origins and purpose
(9:20) Building executive alignment
(14:15) Tying metrics to business value through output-oriented measures
(24:45) Defining impact
(32:42) Choosing between DORA, SPACE, and Core 4 frameworks
SPACE framework, PRs per engineer, AI research
26 Nov 2024
00:32:14
In this episode, Brian Houck, Applied Scientist, Developer Productivity at Microsoft, covers SPACE, DORA, and some specific metrics the developer productivity research team is finding useful. The conversation starts by comparing DORA and SPACE. Brian explains why activity metrics were included in the SPACE framework, then dives into one metric in particular: pull request throughput. Brian also describes another metric Microsoft is finding useful, and gives a preview into where his research is heading.
In this episode, Snowflake’s Gilad Turbahn, Head of Developer Productivity, and Amy Yuan, Director of Engineering, dive into how they elevated developer productivity to a top company priority. They discuss the pivotal role of Snowflake’s CTO, who personally invested over half his time to guide the initiative, and how leadership's hands-on involvement secured buy-in across teams. The conversation also explores the importance of collaboration between engineering and product management, and how measuring user sentiment helped them deliver meaningful, long-lasting improvements.
In this episode, Emanuel Mueller Ramos, Head of Developer Experience at Skyscanner, discusses the evolution of his team as they transitioned from focusing on frameworks and middleware to becoming a customer-centric, impact-driven organization. Emanuel details the strategies he used to gain stakeholder buy-in, why it's crucial to rethink traditional productivity metrics, and how they made a cultural shift to prioritize developer happiness and effectiveness. This conversation highlights the steps necessary to build a developer experience function that delivers meaningful impact.
In this week's episode, Abi is joined by industry leaders Idan Gazit from GitHub, Anna Sulkina from Airbnb, and Alix Melchy from Jumio. Together, they discuss the impact of GenAI tools on developer productivity, exploring challenges in measurement and enhancement. They delve into AI's evolving role in engineering, from overcoming friction points to exploring real-world applications and the future of technology. Gain insights into how AI-driven chat assistants are reshaping workflows and the vision for coding.
In this week's episode, Abi welcomes Jared Wolinsky, Vice President of Platform Engineering at SiriusXM, to delve into the inner workings of platform engineering at SiriusXM. Jared sheds light on their innovative approach to prioritizing projects, emphasizing alignment with overarching business goals. They explore how these strategies boost developer speed and drive technological advancement within the organization.
In this episode, Michelle Swartz, Vice president of Developer Enablement American Express, shares insights on improving developer experience. She discusses the creation of an onboarding bootcamp and the development of the AmEx Way Library for better knowledge management. Michelle explains how AmEx balances standardization and flexibility with the concept of Paved Roads. She also highlights the importance of measuring success, fostering community, and elevating the company's tech credibility.
This week’s episode is a recording from a recent event hosted by Abi Noda (CEO of DX) and Laura Tacho (CTO at DX). The episode begins with an overview of the DORA, SPACE, and DevEx frameworks, including where they overlap and common misconceptions about each. Laura and Abi discuss the advantages and drawbacks of each framework, then discuss how to choose which framework to use.
In this week's episode, we welcome Derek DeBellis, lead researcher on Google's DORA team, for a deep dive into the science and methodology behind DORA's research. We explore Derek's background, his role at Google, and how DORA intersects with other research disciplines. Derek takes us through DORA's research process step by step, from defining outcomes and factors to survey design, analysis, and structural equation modeling.
This week we’re joined by Sean Mcllroy from Slack’s Release Engineering team to learn about how they’ve fully automated their deployment process. This conversation covers Slack’s original release process, key changes Sean’s team has made, and the latest challenges they’re working on today.
This week’s episode is the recording of a live conversation between Abi and Chris Westerhold (Thoughtworks Head of Developer Experience). This conversation is useful for anyone early in their journey with developer portals or platforms: Abi and Chris discuss common approaches to solving these problems, pitfalls to avoid, building vs. buying, and more.
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
How “instructional engineers” improve developer onboarding at Splunk | Gail Carmichael (Splunk)
12 Mar 2024
00:39:31
This week we’re joined by Gail Carmichael, Principal Instructional Engineer at Splunk. At Splunk, Gail’s team is responsible for improving developer onboarding, which they do through a multi-day learning program. Here, Gail shares how this program works and how they measure developer onboarding. The conversation also covers what instructional engineers are generally, and how Gail demonstrates the impact of her team’s work.
Discussion points:
(1:16) The Engineering Enablement & Engagement Team at Splunk
(8:01) What an Instructional Engineer is
(14:36) The developer onboarding program at Splunk
(16:05) Components of a good onboarding program
(21:11) Why having an onboarding program matters
(28:17) Measuring onboarding at Shopify (Gail’s previous company)
Bootstrapping a developer portal | Adam Rogal (DoorDash)
27 Feb 2024
00:54:43
In this episode we’re joined by Adam Rogal, who leads Developer Productivity and Platform at DoorDash. Adam describes DoorDash’s journey with their internal developer portal, and gives advice for other teams looking to follow a similar path. Adam also describes how his team delivered value quickly and drove adoption for their developer platform.
Discussion points:
(1:47) Why DoorDash explored implementing a developer portal
(6:59) The initial vision for the developer portal
A deep-dive on the Thoughtworks Tech Radar | Rebecca Parsons, Camilla Crispim, Erik Dörnenburg (Thoughtworks)
13 Feb 2024
00:45:36
In this episode, Abi has a fascinating conversation with Rebecca Parsons, ThoughtWorks's CTO, Camilla Crispim, and Erik Dörnenburg on the ThoughtWorks Tech Radar. The trio begins with an overview of Tech Radar and its history before delving into the intricate process of creating each report involving multiple teams and stakeholders. The conversation concludes with a focus on the evolution of Tech Radar's design and process and potential future changes. This episode offers Tech Radar fans an exclusive behind-the-scenes look at its history and production.
Discussion points:
1:20-An introduction to the Tech Radar
6:06-Common terms used in this episode
6:27-The origin of the Tech Radar
8:50-Problems that the Tech Radar was aiming to solve
12:23-The impact on internal decision making-a tool for driving change
14:30-The teams philosophy behind Tech Radar
18:33-What sets the Tech Radar apart
21:11-Why maintaining independence is crucial for their audience
25:08-How Tech Radar publishes their reports
29:36-A look into Thoughtworks live meeting sessions
Measuring and rolling out AI coding assistants | Eirini Kalliamvakou (GitHub)
31 Jan 2024
00:47:43
This week's guest is Eirini Kalliamvakou, a staff researcher at GitHub focused on AI and developer experience. Eirini sits at the forefront of research into GitHub Copilot. Abi and Eirini discuss recent research on how AI coding assistance impacts developer productivity. They talk about how leaders should build business cases for AI tools. They also preview what's to come with AI tools and implications for how developer productivity is measured.
Discussion points:
(1:49) Overview of GitHub’s research on AI
(2:59) The research study on Copilot
(4:48) Defining and measuring productivity for this study
(7:44) Exact measures and factors studied
(8:16) Key findings from the study
(9:45) How the study was conducted
(11:17) Most surprising findings for the researchers
(14:01) The motivation for conducting a follow-up study
(15:34) How the follow-up study was conducted
(18:42) Findings from the follow-up study
(21:13) Is AI just hype?
(26:34) How to begin advocating for AI tools
(34:44) How to translate data into dollars
(37:06) How to roll out AI tools to an organization
(38:47) The impact of AI on developer experience
(43:24) Implications of AI on how we measure productivity
Measuring developer productivity at Airbnb | Christopher Sanson (Airbnb)
03 Jan 2024
00:40:57
Christopher Sanson is a product manager at Airbnb who is dedicated to enhancing developer productivity and tooling. Today, we learn more about Airbnb's developer productivity team and how various teams use metrics, both within and outside the organization. From there, we dive even deeper into their measurement journey, highlighting their implementation of DORA metrics and the challenges they overcame throughout the process.
Discussion points:
(2:43) Who is the developer productivity customer
(4:49) The evolution of developer productivity at Airbnb
(9:26) Approach before DORA metrics
(14:29) Getting buy-in for DORA metrics
(17:49) Planning how to deliver new metrics to the organization
(21:12) How Airbnb calculates deployment frequency
(23:29) Implementing a proof of concept
(27:20) Statistical measurement strategies and tactics
Leading a DevEx team through transformation | Ana Petkovska (Nexthink)
13 Dec 2023
00:26:35
In this episode, Abi speaks with Ana Petkovska, who is currently leading the developer experience team at Nexthink. Ana takes us through her journey of leading a DevOps team that underwent multiple transformations. She explains how her team went from being a DevOps team to EngProd and eventually DevEx. Ana elaborates on her team's challenges and the reasons behind the shift in focus. She also shares how she discovered EngProd and used data from companies like Google to convince her company to invest in EngProd. Finally, Ana explains how DevEx came into the picture and changed how her team approaches and measures their work.
How LinkedIn defines and tracks key developer productivity metrics | Grant Jenks (LinkedIn)
06 Dec 2023
00:52:23
In this episode, Abi chats with Grant Jenks, Senior Staff SWE, Engineering Insights @ LinkedIn. They dive into LinkedIn's developer insights platform, iHub, and its backstory. The conversation covers qualitative versus quantitative metrics, sharing concerns about these terms and exploring their correlation. The episode wraps up with technical topics like winsorized means, thoughts on composite scores, and ways AI can benefit developer productivity teams.
(1:10) Insights in the productivity space (7:13) LinkedIn's metrics platform, iHub (12:52) Making metrics actionable (15:35) Choosing the right and wrong metrics (19:39) The difficulty of answering simple questions (26:23) Top-down vs. bottom-up approach to metrics (32:12) Winsorized mean and selecting measurements (39:25) Using composite metrics (46:57) Using AI in developer productivity
Building an internal developer platform at CVS Health | Jim Beyers (CVS Health)
22 Nov 2023
00:31:08
This week's episode is with Jim Beyers, VP of Engineering Enablement at CVS Health. Jim joined CVS a year ago to lead an effort to build an internal developer platform. Abi and Jim discuss how Jim joined CVS to build an internal developer platform, what brought him to the job, and how the developer experience fits into the broader transformation goals of CVS. Additionally, this episode covers building the team, defining a strategy, and how he's thinking about winning the hearts and minds across his organization.
Discussion points:
(1:15) How Jim was brought into CVS
(2:39) How DevEx aligns with CVS’s transformation initiatives
(6:06) Jim’s vision for developer experience
(8:26) Building a DevEx team and working with product managers
(15:06) Defining and communicating a DevEx strategy
(19:37) Assessing Backstage and developing a platform
(24:40) Working with developers and leaders
(27:55) Working alongside colleagues tackling similar problems
The Platform PM role at Spotify | Nils Loodin (Spotify)
15 Nov 2023
00:52:10
This week we spoke with Nils Loodin, Platform Product Manager at Spotify. Nils describes how his role in platform product management works, including unique challenges, approaches, and career considerations. Nils also discusses some of the recent changes within Spotify's platform organization, including shifting teams from tech-centric to journey-centric.
Discussion points:
(1:30) How Nils came into his role
(3:59) How “developer experience” came into the picture at Spotify
(5:30) How the Platform team is structured
(8:52) Unique challenges of the Platform PM role
(12:51) Defining the Platform PM’s focus
(16:39) Staying close to their customers
(21:09) Optimal background for someone in this role
(24:43) Attracting PMs into Platform roles
(29:40) How it is that Spotify’s leadership invests in developer experience
(31:19) How a recent reorg shifted Platform’s focus
Evolving platform and enablement at Thomson Reuters | Justin Wright, Matthew Dimich (Thomson Reuters)
08 Nov 2023
00:41:18
This week we’re joined by Justin Wright and Matthew Dimich, who lead Platform Engineering and Engineering Enablement at Thomson Reuters. Justin and Matt give an inside look at how they’ve evolved their organization’s structure and approach over the past 8 years.
Discussion points:
(1:03) Founding the platform team
(5:49) The current organizational structure
(9:00) Key initiatives the platform organization is focused on
(12:55) The enablement function within platform
(16:44) What drove the engagement function’s growth
(19:42) The value of having an enablement function
(24:05) Marketing the enablement team’s work
(29:47) How enablement interfaces with other platform teams
Key findings from the 2023 State of Devops Report | Nathen Harvey (DORA at Google)
25 Oct 2023
00:45:59
This week’s episode dives into the DORA research program and this year’s State of DevOps Report. Nathen Harvey, who leads DORA at Google, shares the key findings from the research and what’s changed since previous reports.
Discussion points:
(1:10) What DORA focuses on
(2:17) Where the DORA metrics fit
(4:35) Introduction to user-centric software development
(8:05) Impact of user-centricity on software delivery
(9:40) Team performance vs. organizational performance
(13:50) Importance of internal documentation
(15:19) Methodology for designing surveys
(19:52) Impact of documentation on software delivery
(23:11) Reemergence of the Elite cluster
(25:55) Advice for leaders leveraging benchmarks
(28:30) Redefining MTTR
(33:45) Changing how Change Failure Rate is measured
Atlassian’s journey with developer experience | Preeti Kota (Atlassian)
18 Oct 2023
00:44:55
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.
(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
Shopify’s developer happiness survey | Mark Côté (Shopify)
27 Sep 2023
00:44:21
This week we’re joined by Mark Côté, who leads the Developer Infrastructure organization at Shopify, to learn about their developer survey program. Mark shares what went into designing and running the survey, what they’ve done to drive participation rates higher, and how they interpret their data.
(4:22) Three types of information gleaned from the survey
(7:37) Designing and running the survey
(12:28) Participation rates
(15:12) Why there's an increase of interest in the results at Shopify
(17:42) What's affecting participation rates
(23:03) Selecting survey questions
(27:01) Refining survey questions
(28:54) Survey length
(30:56) Analyzing the results
(33:31) How the data is stored and shared
(35:56) Sending targeted surveys to the right developers
(37:40) Using the results as a Developer Acceleration organization
(39:29) Confidence in the data
(41:27) The value of a developer survey
Leading platform engineering at Trivago | Thomas Khalil (Trivago)
22 Aug 2023
00:30:52
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
Enabling teams to drive their own productivity improvements | Jenny McClain (Toast)
16 Aug 2023
00:43:36
This week’s guest is Jenny McClain, who leads R&D Team Enablement at Toast. Jenny’s team focuses on enabling individual teams at Toast to drive their own productivity improvements, and this conversation dives into how they tackle this problem.
Discussion points:
(1:19) How the R&D Enablement team works
(2:50) Why the team was formed
(4:31) The types of work the team focuses on
(7:31) Identifying the problems this team would solve
(11:23) How team embeds work
(17:19) The learning resources the team develops and maintains
(20:55) Who creates and maintains the learning resources
(23:10) How enablement stays connected with teams at scale
(25:51) How the team plans work with qualitative and quantitative measures
(29:37) Formats for sharing knowledge between teams
(33:05) How other companies can think about the enablement function
Working Agreements template from Steve Sobel, Director of Engineering at Toast - one of the resources featured in Toast’s Team Health Toolkit
How Google measures developer productivity | Ciera Jaspan, Collin Green (Google)
02 Aug 2023
01:14:12
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 measurement
Mentions and links: Follow Ciera and Collin on LinkedIn A Human-Centered Approach to Measuring Developer Productivity - Paper, Abi’s summary Enabling the Study of Software Development with Cross-Tool Logs - Paper Defining, Measuring, and Managing Tech Debt - Paper, Abi’s summary Google’s Goals, Signals, Metrics framework - Paper, Abi’s summary
A customer service approach to improving DevEx | Jason Kennedy (One Medical)
12 Jul 2023
00:44:30
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
Behind the scenes with Extend’s developer experience team | Matthew Schrepel and Luke Patterson (Extend)
13 Jun 2023
00:59:40
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
Platform teams vs enabling teams | Manuel Pais (Team Topologies)
07 Jun 2023
00:53:26
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
A close look at Peloton’s developer experience survey | Thansha Sadacharam (Peloton)
24 May 2023
00:58:34
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
A better way to measure developer productivity | A special episode with Laura Tacho and Abi Noda
16 May 2023
01:08:29
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 organizations
Resources for learning more about the DevEx framework:
The developer experience of building a database | Tara Hernandez (MongoDB, Google)
02 May 2023
00:39:36
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
How teams use productivity metrics at LinkedIn | Max Kanat-Alexander (LinkedIn, Google)
26 Apr 2023
00:53:19
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 measurement
Inside Etsy’s multi-year DevEx initiative | Mike Fisher (Etsy, PayPal)
19 Apr 2023
00:52:40
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
Implementing a developer portal | Karl Haworth (American Airlines)
05 Apr 2023
00:54:09
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 platform
Bringing the product management discipline to platform teams | Russ Nealis (Plaid)
29 Mar 2023
00:45:11
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 role
Mentions and links: Follow Russ on LinkedIn Episode 7 with Will Larson - related to why it’s difficult to find Platform PMs Episode 27 with Jean-Michel Lemieux - related to the percentage of investment that should be put towards platform investments The Build Trap by Melissa Perri Ask Your Developer by Jeff Lawson
Intercom’s approach to a great on-call experience | Brian Scanlan (Intercom)
08 Mar 2023
01:10:24
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
How Instagram Reels manages reliability | Jack Li (Instagram, Shopify)
16 Feb 2023
00:56:28
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 Queue Jack’s talk on Shopify’s Merge Queue at GitHub Universe 2019
A masterclass on DORA – research program, common pitfalls, and future direction | Nathen Harvey (Google)
25 Jan 2023
00:54:45
Nathen Harvey, who leads DORA at Google, explains what DORA is, how it has evolved in recent years, the common challenges companies face as they adopt DORA metrics, and where the program may be heading in the future.
—
Discussion points:
(1:48) What DORA is today and how it exists within Google
(3:37) The vision for Google and DORA coming together
(5:20) How the DORA research program works
(7:53) Who participates in the DORA survey
(9:28) How the industry benchmarks are identified
(11:05) How the reports have evolved over recent years
(13:55) How reliability is measured
(15:19) Why the 2022 report didn’t have an Elite category
(17:11) The new Slowing, Flowing, and Retiring clusters
(19:25) How to think about applying the benchmarks
(20:45) Challenges with how DORA metrics are used
(24:02) Why comparing teams’ DORA metrics is an antipattern
(26:18) Why ‘industry’ doesn’t matter when comparing organizations to benchmarks
(29:32) Moving beyond DORA metrics to optimize organizational performance
(30:56) Defining different DORA metrics
(36:27) Measuring deployment frequency at the team level, not the organizational level
(38:29) The capabilities: there’s more to DORA than the four metrics
Join the DORA community for discussion and events: dora.community
An inside look at the SPACE framework | Dr. Margaret-Anne Storey (co-author, SPACE)
18 Jan 2023
00:37:48
This week's guest is Dr. Margaret-Anne Storey, who goes by the name Peggy. Peggy is a professor of Computer Science at the University of Victoria, the Chief Scientist at DX, and co-author of the SPACE Framework, which is the topic of focus in this episode. Today’s conversation discusses what the SPACE framework is and what went into developing the metrics and categories. Peggy also shares where she sees this line of research heading next.
—
Discussion points:
(1:29) Peggy’s background (4:01) What the SPACE framework is (5:55) Why the researchers came together for this paper (7:27) The process of writing this paper (9:52) How the SPACE categories and acronym emerged (11:50) The authors’ intention for how this framework would be received (13:26) Finding a definition for what developer productivity is (17:08) The metrics included in the SPACE framework (24:48) How SPACE is different from DORA (26:17) Why lines of code and number of pull requests were included as example metrics (27:14) What Peggy is thinking about next
Spotify’s failed #SquadGoals | Jeremiah Lee (Spotify, Stripe)
11 Jan 2023
00:43:33
This week’s guest is Jeremiah Lee, who was previously a manager at Stripe and product manager at Spotify. This conversation focuses on org structure, and specifically Jeremiah’s experience with the popular squad model from Spotify. Jeremiah provides the backstory on where the model came from, what parts of the model were a challenge, and advice for leaders either already adopting the model or considering doing so.
Discussion points:
(1:40) What the Spotify model is
(4:39) Jeremiah’s impression of the Spotify model as he joined the company
(7:29) Spotify’s progress in adopting the model as Jeremiah joined
(9:55) Challenges with matrix management
(12:02) The role of engineering managers
(14:40) What the model was designed to solve
(15:54) Good autonomy versus toxic autonomy
(18:51) How Agile coaches were used at Spotify
(21:39) Advice for teams who are struggling to implement the Spotify model
(24:50) Advice for leaders who are starting to think about org design
(27:30) How Stripe approached org structure
(30:26) How org structure affects a platform team’s work
(33:32) Tracking engineering org structures
(36:02) Why the squad model became so popular
(39:37) What the original authors may have felt about the popularity of the model