Accelerating developer experience (DevEx)

Introduction

Organizations are increasingly recognizing that investing in developers and DevEx can unlock a wealth of opportunities for product innovation, operational efficiencies, and customer satisfaction.

For instance, the Canadian telecommunications provider TELUS streamlined productivity and saved $17 million by investing in developer tools to better support developer collaboration.¹ The language learning platform, Duolingo, invested heavily in artificial intelligence (AI)-driven developer productivity tools, increasing developer speed by 25% and cutting median code review time by 67%.² Toyota Motor North America drove $5 million in annual savings and reduced time-to-ship projects to weekly instead of quarterly by building an internal developer portal called Chofer.³ Etsy invested 20% of its engineering budget in developer experience as it scaled its engineering organization from 250 people to almost 1,000.⁴

Developers are a critical stakeholder group in driving business impact and outcomes. In this article, we’ll explore the rise of developers and their importance, what constitutes developer experience, and six best practices designed to help engineering and product leaders tap into the full
potential of their developer teams.

Forces contributing to the rise in importance of developers

Developers are responsible for the design, engineering, and maintenance of the software that underpins the $880 billion software economy.⁵ Additionally, the market for products sold directly to, influenced by purchase, and/or consumed by developers is approximately $40 billion, expected to grow at a rate of 19% annually.⁶ This includes software and application development, digital content creation, website building, and hardware product design, as well as auxiliary services such as developer tools, platforms, and marketplaces.

Our experiences and research suggest that both major demand-side and supply-side forces are driving developer growth.

These demand-side and supply-side forces have led to a notable increase in the number of professional developers, both those employed internally by an organization (referred to as first-party, or 1P, developers) and those external to an organization but building on the organization’s products and platforms (referred to as third-party, or 3P, developers). There are an estimated 27 million software developers globally.⁹ Moreover, jobs in software development, not just across the technology industry but across every industry, are expected to grow by 25% within the next decade, compared to only an 8% average growth rate for other professions.¹⁰

The increase in influence of developers

As developers rise in prominence, their influence in the organization has also expanded. In some cases, individual developers or developer teams are taking the lead in selecting tools to make their work more seamless and productive. According to a Stack Overflow survey, 57% of developers said they influence technology purchases in their organization. Some even had the freedom to make their own purchases to get the tools they need.¹¹

Moreover, developers are playing an increasing role in crafting a company’s product roadmap and customer strategy, helping drive competitive differentiation. At Netflix, developers have a high degree of ownership for the products they develop. The organization emphasizes “freedom and responsibility,” a guiding principle that empowers developers to be accountable for product decisions.¹²

Investing in DevEx to unlock enterprise value

Like customer experience (CX), DevEx as a domain is more than just operational improvement and productivity enhancement. It’s a portfolio of end-to-end capabilities that touches all aspects of the developer role.

DevEx consists of the range of mutually reinforcing capabilities that an organization provides to maximize developer productivity and developer satisfaction.

Elevating DevEx requires venturing beyond developer productivity tools, processes, and frameworks, which is traditionally the scope of developer operations (DevOps). Every touchpoint a developer has with an organization—whether it be internal development tools and an engineering team lead for internal developers or external software development kits (SDKs) and a customer support rep for external developers—contributes to the developer’s overall experience. Designing developer-centric capabilities with developer outcomes in mind—such as standardized playbooks, well-being resources, easy knowledge sharing, and proactive support—can enable a company to move with greater agility, increase innovation, and improve shareholder value. Developer productivity and satisfaction are, in fact, mutually reinforcing dimensions. As developers are empowered, they often perform better (and vice versa). In fact, pioneering organizations are already proving the DevEx business case: companies focusing on best-in-class developer experiences achieve 60% higher revenue growth than those that don’t.¹³

Designing for developers: six best practices to elevate DevEx

To design best-in-class developer experiences effectively, we suggest six best practices for leaders:

1. Clarify your North Star. A clear, well-defined, actionable, and universally aligned ambition for your DevEx organization is a critical first step to drive focus, accountability, and action. As such, this North Star is not static and can vary depending on the evolving ambition and maturity of the organization. In our experience, most developer organization roles contain some blend of four archetypes: operator, catalyst, technologist, and strategist.
2. Place your bets. To understand where to maximize probability of success, leaders must (a) understand who their target developer personas and segments are, (b) uncover challenges and needs they have across the developer journey, (c) assess which capabilities and practices should be invested in to create the best experiences for developers, and (d) prioritize investments based on time to value and impact.
3. Articulate value. Estimating the ROI of DevEx investments can be elusive, primarily due to the complexity in quantifying the intangible and indirect value that it drives for the organization and the ecosystem. Estimating this “art of possible” ROI using data-driven methodologies and continuously tracking progress using leading, developer-centric key performance indicators (KPIs) will help drive progress and impact.
4. Reenergize culture and community. There is an inherent lack of diversity and inclusion in the software development community. It is imperative to build a coherent workforce and culture strategy that aligns with the organization’s mission and developers’ expectations around diversity, equity, and inclusion.
5. Anticipate and design for regulation. Incorporating regulatory concerns in the product life cycle minimizes risk, decreases costs associated with noncompliance, mitigates product launch delays, and avoids developer frustration. An “always-on,” regulatory compliance mindset can move a developer organization from being reactive to proactive.
6. Think about convergence. The motivations, challenges, and needs of internal and external developers are often similar, if not identical. In fact, internal developers often transition into the external world, or vice versa. Recognizing the convergence of internal and external developers highlights the importance of considering both when it comes to testing, building, launching, and monetizing products and solutions. By taking a holistic approach that addresses the requirements of both developer types, organizations can ensure comprehensive and inclusive success strategies.

Moving forward with DevEx

Investing in developers can unlock a range of opportunities, including product innovation, operational efficiencies, and improved customer satisfaction. Developers are a critical stakeholder group in driving business impact and outcomes. Emphasizing DevEx has been shown to drive higher revenue growth and innovation for companies. Our six step approach helps leaders elevate DevEx and play a more strategic role in helping their organizations thrive in today’s digitally fueled economy. The next article in our DevEx series will explore in greater detail the importance of articulating a clear DevEx North Star, and provide thought-starters on North Star archetypes that we see in leading DevEx organizations across industries.

Endnotes

¹ GitHub, “TELUS streamlined productivity by replacing their DevOps tools with GitHub,” accessed April 2022.
² GitHub, “Duolingo empowers its engineers to be force multipliers for expertise with GitHub Copilot, Codespaces.,” accessed April 2022.
³ AWS, “Building a development platform to support secure application deployment using Backstage and AWS with Toyota Motor North America,” 2022.
⁴ Abi Noda, “Inside Etsy’s multi-year DevEx initiative,” Engineering Enablement, April 28, 2023.
⁵ Gartner, “Gartner forecasts worldwide IT spending to grow 5.1% in 2023,” press release, October 19, 2022.
⁶ Tyler Jewell, “The developer-led landscape,” Tyler’s Musings, September 23, 2020.
⁷ Janet Foutty, “How digital transformation—and a challenging environment—are building agility and resilience,” Deloitte Insights, April 29, 2021.
⁸ MarketsandMarkets, Platform as a service (PaaS) market report, April 2021.
⁹ Lionel Sujay Vailshery, Developers population worldwide 2018–2024, December 6, 2022.
¹⁰ US Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Outlook Handbook, February 6, 2023.
¹¹ Stack Overflow, “Discover how developers are gaining influence on technology purchases,” July 21, 2023.
¹² Paul Jansen, “How freedom and responsibility make Netflix rule the world,” Run and Jump, September 18, 2020.
¹³ Surya Panditi, “Survey data shows that many companies are still not truly agile,” Harvard Business Review, March 22, 2018.