Engineering Enablement by Abi Noda DX

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.
Mentions and links:

Follow Mark on LinkedIn

Read Shopify’s engineering blog

Discussion points:

(1:32) Starting the survey
(3:20) How the survey has evolved
(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

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

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
(37:40) Enablement as a career path
Mentions and links:Follow Jenny on LinkedInTuckman’s stages of group development
Working Agreements template from Steve Sobel, Director of Engineering at Toast - one of the resources featured in Toast’s Team Health Toolkit 

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 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 James
Book 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