As a platform engineer, how do you help your customers go quicker? Which aspects of developer experience should you care about? More importantly, how do you curate an experience for them?
A recent InfoQ article from Andy Burgin focuses on how to curate a developer’s experience. It describes his experience, what his company learned from implementing DevEx, and what you, as a platform engineer, can do to create a developer experience for the development teams that use your platforms. He explains all the practical things his team did, what worked (and what didn’t), how success was measured, and how the team’s focus has evolved over the years.
Key takeaways include:
- Developer experience (DevEx) goes beyond productivity, encompassing aspects like ease of use, collaboration, and empathy. It addresses a sociotechnical problem by creating relationships and engagement.
- Creating a positive DevEx involves understanding developer needs and challenges, fostering collaboration, and continuously using feedback loops to improve platform usability.
- It’s often a people problem, not a tooling problem. Tooling needs to help engineers "shift left" and genuinely empower users rather than being a burden or unused shelfware.
- Practical steps like running annual surveys, creating usability metrics, and fostering continuous engagement with users can help the team track progress and identify areas for improvement over time.
- As development teams mature, they can ideally integrate the DevEx function into day-to-day operations. Effective DevEx efforts can lead to self-sufficient teams with reduced reliance on platform engineers.
This content is an excerpt from a recent InfoQ article by Andy Burgin, "Curating Developer Experience: Practical Insights from Building a Platform Team".
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