Engineering Enablement by Abi Noda
Jun 22, 2022
Why founding a DevEx team is like starting a startup | Minh Pham, Titus Stone (Ibotta)
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In this episode we’re joined by Minh Pham and Titus Stone from Ibotta’s Developer Experience team. You’ll hear their story about how the DX team came into existence, why they view a DX team as a “startup within a startup”, and their vision for what DX at Ibotta will become.
More episodes from Engineering Enablement by Abi Noda
6 days ago
A close look at Peloton’s developer experience survey | Thansha Sadacharam (Peloton)
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 links
Follow Thansha on LinkedIn
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May 16, 2023
A better way to measure developer productivity | A special episode with Laura Tacho and Abi Noda
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:
Read the new paper on ACM Queue
Read 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 Performance
Connect with Laura on LinkedIn or Twitter
Connect with Abi on LinkedIn or Twitter
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May 2, 2023
The developer experience of building a database | Tara Hernandez (MongoDB, Google)
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 source
Mentions and links:
Follow Tara on LinkedIn or Twitter
Read more about MongoDB’s “Evergreen” Continuous Integration
Visit MongoDB’s engineering blog
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