Developer experience

If yes:
Move onto 02.

If no:
Understanding your developers' pain points is the first step to improving your DevEx.

Recommended next steps:

Run a survey with your developers and ask them questions like:

• What is the hardest part about doing your work, and why?
• When thinking about your development tools and processes, what is the biggest barrier to your productivity?
• If you could change one thing about the way our team builds software, what would it be?

If yes:
Move onto 03.

If no:
DevEx is multi-faceted, so it requires a multi-faceted framework to understand it—that's why we invented the SPACE framework. It considers five dimensions of DevEx: satisfaction and well-being, performance, activity, communication and collaboration, and efficiency and flow.

To assess your DevEx, we recommend tracking metrics/KPIs across at least three dimensions of SPACE.

To learn more about the SPACE framework and to see example metrics from each dimension, read the research paper.

If yes:
Move onto 04.

If no:
It's important to define clear, realistic goals for each metric. In addition, it's important that these goals align with your developer pain points.

It can be challenging to set your goals. Some choose to reference metrics from other high-performing teams or companies, some reference industry benchmarks. It's also important to note that your goals can change over time to reflect continued improvement.

To learn more about how to quantify the impact of DevEx and the possible ROI, read our blog and research paper.

If yes:
Move onto 05.

If no:
The only way to improve your DevEx is to improve the way your developers work. Usually, this means investing in tools that make their lives easier or streamlining key processes. For increased effectiveness, we recommend focusing and tracking your DevEx improvement work with the metrics you've identified.

If yes:
Move onto Continue your journey.

If no:
Sometimes, organizations make the mistake of holding their developers accountable for their DevEx, but this is unfair because developers do not design their company's toolchain or processes—the leadership team does.

DevEx initiatives should be spearheaded by the leadership team with the explicit goal of improving the experience of their developers, and the leadership team should be held accountable for the success of those initiatives.

This is not to say that developers should not be involved with DevEx initiatives. These initiatives are designed to address developer pain points, so of course developers should be consulted and involved throughout the process, but at the end of the day, the leadership team should be held accountable for improving DevEx in their organization.

Your DevEx is more mature than most, but the journey is never complete. Stay ahead of the competition by reading our latest DevEx research and exploring modern developer tools that can improve DevEx.