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Nov 11, 20195 min read
Good Developer ExperienceDo not forget to make your developers happy, and keep them happy!
What Is a Good Developer ExperienceThe Developer Experience (DX) describes the experience developers have while using or working on your product. It is a package of positive and also negative feelings. In many companies, dealing with DX is often secondary to trying to make a User Experience (UX) as good as possible. This approach is unfortunate - developers are users too! They use your product, frameworks, tools, etc. and they have some experience of using it. It is up to you to decide if this experience is going to be a good one or a bad one. But remember, their satisfaction and happiness are crucial for the success of your project. Happy developers create exceptional software in the long term. A positive developer experience, ensures that your developers are happy, satisfied, and less likely to leave your team.
We define a great DX by these four factors:
1. Fitting architectureFind a compromise between simple and more complex architecture. Simple means more pain later, complex brings more pain now. Consider the size of your project and your team. Good architecture is difficult to break, has short feedback loops and it has a great introspection.
2. Great toolsAutomate where possible. Repetitive tasks are exhausting. Automation lets your team understand the configurations.
3. Processes to back that all upProcesses work as automated checklists, and give you have consistent steps that need to be done each time. Defined processes help you with team discipline. Use processes for QA, deployment, feedback, and for onboarding if your company is big enough.
4. Nontoxic team cultureDefine the purpose of your company: making money should not be the only goal. Culture itself is the most important brainware (a software that runs in the brain) you can install within your company and the team - every decision the developers take will be filtered through the installed brainware. If they do not agree with the brainware, they ignore it.
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Why You Might Want the Good Developer ExperienceThe teams with good DX are highly productive, and display these traits:
Sense of impact
They understand that they are not just making money. They know that their work matters, they are improving someone else’s life.
Great sense of ownership and responsibility
They are responsible for the success. Every team member should feel a responsibility for the company’s success.
A common goal
With the team, their division, and the company as a whole.
Friendliness and honesty
We call it “hey bro” culture. We emphasize sincerity with great respect.
Allows for failure
Developers should be brave and take risks. But risks should always be calculated, and developers have to be aware of how much of a boom every action can cause.
Traits of culture with bad DX:
Finger-pointing
Team members may blame each other for poor work. This is a very toxic thing but it happens a lot.
Big penalty for a failure
For example, when your boss says that if you do not meet the deadline, you can be fired
Constant crunch time, constant overloading of the teams
Hostility and uncertainty
Unhealthy competitiveness between teams (for example, this guy was promoted because he did a better job than me)
Diluted responsibility
In big companies, it can feel like nobody is responsible for anything. It takes balls to say: “sorry guys, I screwed up”. It is crucial to be able to take responsibility.
There is a famous "Scope Triangle" created in the mid 1980s by Dr. Martin Barnes. It shows the relationship between the three primary forces in a project:
Source: Scope Triangle
This triangle means that if you want to increase the time, you have to increase money or quality.
We disagree - that is not how it works in reality. You have to insert an emotional cost to the triangle:
If your developer has to stay late to finish a task, it is not only the time they have to invest. Another part of this investment is an emotional cost. Having a great DX helps you having this emotional cost under control. Keep the emotional cost low to make your developers happy.
Common Pitfalls of the Good Developer Experiencegood developer experience
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CEO at DX Heroes
CEO at DX Heroes
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