Software is the expression of the business, and the rapidly evolving technology landscape drives high demand for skilled developers. If your business is a software business — and today, every business is a software business — it’s essential to keep the developers of that software happy and productive. Developer experience is the organizational capability to create an environment where development team members thrive. Building on the foundation of employee experience, it’s more than just a feeling of well-being among developer employees.
Happy Developers Are Productive Developers
Developers like to be productive. Improving developer experience can boost personal satisfaction, raise deliverable quality, increase efficiency, reduce turnover, and help align the goals of your development teams with those of your organization. It can also make forming teams easier. Developers talk to their peers. Happy and productive developers attract their talented peers. Unhappy developers ask “Who else is hiring?”
There Are Five Levers To Improve Developer Experience
How do you make your organization a destination of choice for talented software developers? Focus on five categories:
- Tools and technologies
- Software architecture
- Processes
- Metrics
- Culture
How much you can do with each depends on your role in the organization.
Embrace A Culture Of Resilience
No matter what your role, you can start building a culture of resilience — one of several factors in improving the developer experience. When problems occur, healthy organizations hunt down the root cause of the problem and add guardrails to prevent recurrence. They’re not looking for someone to blame. They focus on how the development team can succeed.
To learn more about the five levers, what the best developer experiences are, and why they’re important for your organization, read Understand Developer Experience To Improve Business Outcomes.
(written with Caroline Bonde)
