Engineering Enablement by DX

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 
• 12:19 Funding ongoing development 
• 16:01 Deciding what to include in the portal 
• 19:15 Coming up with a name for the portal 
• 20:01 Advice for interested beginners
• 23:55 Putting together a business case
• 32:32 Getting adoption for the portal 
• 37:27 Driving initial awareness 
• 41:29 Getting feedback from developers
• 48:33 What Adam would have done differently

Mentions and links:

• Adam Rogal on LinkedIn
• Get started (API)
• New testing and monitoring tools

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
• 34:51-Tech Radars Git repository
• 42:20-Recent changes and upcoming shifts

Mentions and links:

• ThoughtWorks TechRadar
• Rebecca Parsons on LinkedIn
• Camilla Crispim on LinkedIn
• Erik Dörnenburg on LinkedIn
• Thoughtworks Git repository

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

Mentions and links:

• Eirini Kalliamvakou on LinkedIn
• Research on the impact of Copilot 
• Crossing the Chasm by Geoffrey Moore

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
• (31:11) Operationalizing developer productivity metrics
• (34:26) How Airbnb reviews data
• (35:41) How Airbnb uses DORA metrics

Mentions and links:

• Christopher Sanson on LinkedIn
• Christopher’s talk at DPE Summit
• How Top Companies Measure Developer Productivity

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.

Discussion points:

• (00:28) Creating and leading a DevOps team
• (05:04) Shifting from DevOps to EngProd
• (07:28) Inspiration from Google
• (10:05) Building the case for EngProd
• (13:42) Ratio of engineers to DevEx engineers
• (15:10) Team mission and charter
• (16:53) Learning about DevEx
• (20:05) The difference between EngProd and DevEx
• (22:32) Nexthink's focus today

Mentions and links:

• Ana Petkovska on LinkedIn
• Engineering Productivity @Google (Michael Bachman)

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

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
• (29:26) Reporting on progress

Mentions and links:

• Jim Beyers on LinkedIn
• Jim’s talk on the Target Application Platform

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 
• (41:29) Improving onboarding for mobile engineers
• (47:33) Measuring onboarding 

Mentions and links:

• Connect with Nils on LinkedIn
• The product management discipline in platform teams | Russ Nealis (Plaid)
• Spotify’s Engineering blog 

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
• (33:22) Managing the work enablement focuses on
• (36:55) The balance of requests vs proactive work

Mentions and links:

• Connect with Justin and Matt on LinkedIn
• Manuel Pais’ Platform as a Product talk

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
• (36:45) Impact of AI on software delivery 
• (41:25) Impact of code review speed

Mentions and links:

• Connect with Nathen on LinkedIn
• Listen to the previous episode with Nathen
• Read the 2023 State of Devops Report
• The DORA Quick Check
• Blog post: Documentation is like sunshine
• Join the DORA community
• DevEx: What Actually Drives Productivity