Engineering Enablement by Abi Noda

This week’s episode is a recording from a recent event hosted by Abi Noda (CEO of DX) and Laura Tacho (CTO at DX). The episode begins with an overview of the DORA, SPACE, and DevEx frameworks, including where they overlap and common misconceptions about each. Laura and Abi discuss the advantages and drawbacks of each framework, then discuss how to choose which framework to use. Discussion points: Mentions and Links: Dora.dev

In this week's episode, we welcome Derek DeBellis, lead researcher on Google's DORA team, for a deep dive into the science and methodology behind DORA's research. We explore Derek's background, his role at Google, and how DORA intersects with other research disciplines. Derek takes us through DORA's research process step by step, from defining outcomes and factors to survey design, analysis, and structural equation modeling. Discussion points: Mentions and Links: LinkedInmeasuring GenAI adoption and impact2023 Accelerate State of DevOps Report

This week we’re joined by Sean Mcllroy from Slack’s Release Engineering team to learn about how they’ve fully automated their deployment process. This conversation covers Slack’s original release process, key changes Sean’s team has made, and the latest challenges they’re working on today. Discussion points: Mentions and links: The Scary Thing About DeploysLinkedIn

This week’s episode is the recording of a live conversation between Abi and Chris Westerhold (Thoughtworks Head of Developer Experience). This conversation is useful for anyone early in their journey with developer portals or platforms: Abi and Chris discuss common approaches to solving these problems, pitfalls to avoid, building vs. buying, and more. Discussion points: Mentions and Links LinkedInWatch the recordingWatch part 2PlatformX

On this week's episode, Abi interviews Kent Wills, Director of Engineering Effectiveness at Yelp. He shares insights into the evolution of their developer productivity efforts over the past decade. From tackling challenges with their monolithic architecture to scaling productivity initiatives for over 1,300 developers. Kent also touches on his experience in building a business case for developer productivity. Discussion points: Mentions and Links LinkedInKent’s 2023 talkPeter Seibeldeveloper productivity team headcount

This week we’re joined by Gail Carmichael, Principal Instructional Engineer at Splunk. At Splunk, Gail’s team is responsible for improving developer onboarding, which they do through a multi-day learning program. Here, Gail shares how this program works and how they measure developer onboarding. The conversation also covers what instructional engineers are generally, and how Gail demonstrates the impact of her team’s work. Discussion points: Mentions and Links LinkedInDeveloper productivity metrics at top tech companies

In this episode we’re joined by Adam Rogal, who leads Developer Productivity and Platform at DoorDash. Adam describes DoorDash’s journey with their internal developer portal, and gives advice for other teams looking to follow a similar path. Adam also describes how his team delivered value quickly and drove adoption for their developer platform. Discussion points: Mentions and links: LinkedInGet started (API)New testing and monitoring tools

In this episode, Abi has a fascinating conversation with Rebecca Parsons, ThoughtWorks's CTO, Camilla Crispim, and Erik Dörnenburg on the ThoughtWorks Tech Radar. The trio begins with an overview of Tech Radar and its history before delving into the intricate process of creating each report involving multiple teams and stakeholders. The conversation concludes with a focus on the evolution of Tech Radar's design and process and potential future changes. This episode offers Tech Radar fans an exclusive behind-the-scenes look at its history and production. Discussion points: Mentions and links: ThoughtWorks TechRadarRebecca Parsons on LinkedInCamilla Crispim on LinkedInErik Dörnenburg on LinkedInThoughtworks Git repository

This week's guest is Eirini Kalliamvakou, a staff researcher at GitHub focused on AI and developer experience. Eirini sits at the forefront of research into GitHub Copilot. Abi and Eirini discuss recent research on how AI coding assistance impacts developer productivity. They talk about how leaders should build business cases for AI tools. They also preview what's to come with AI tools and implications for how developer productivity is measured. Discussion points: Mentions and links: Eirini Kalliamvakou on LinkedInResearch on the impact of Copilot Crossing the Chasm by Geoffrey Moore

Christopher Sanson is a product manager at Airbnb who is dedicated to enhancing developer productivity and tooling. Today, we learn more about Airbnb's developer productivity team and how various teams use metrics, both within and outside the organization. From there, we dive even deeper into their measurement journey, highlighting their implementation of DORA metrics and the challenges they overcame throughout the process. Discussion points: Mentions and links: LinkedInChristopher’s talk at DPE SummitHow Top Companies Measure Developer Productivity

In this episode, Abi speaks with Ana Petkovska, who is currently leading the developer experience team at Nexthink. Ana takes us through her journey of leading a DevOps team that underwent multiple transformations. She explains how her team went from being a DevOps team to EngProd and eventually DevEx. Ana elaborates on her team's challenges and the reasons behind the shift in focus. She also shares how she discovered EngProd and used data from companies like Google to convince her company to invest in EngProd. Finally, Ana explains how DevEx came into the picture and changed how her team approaches and measures their work. Discussion points: Mentions and links: LinkedInEngineering Productivity @Google (Michael Bachman)

In this episode, Abi chats with Grant Jenks, Senior Staff SWE, Engineering Insights @ LinkedIn. They dive into LinkedIn's developer insights platform, iHub, and its backstory. The conversation covers qualitative versus quantitative metrics, sharing concerns about these terms and exploring their correlation. The episode wraps up with technical topics like winsorized means, thoughts on composite scores, and ways AI can benefit developer productivity teams. (1:10) Insights in the productivity space (7:13) LinkedIn's metrics platform, iHub (12:52) Making metrics actionable (15:35) Choosing the right and wrong metrics (19:39) The difficulty of answering simple questions (26:23) Top-down vs. bottom-up approach to metrics (32:12) Winsorized mean and selecting measurements (39:25) Using composite metrics (46:57) Using AI in developer productivity

This week's episode is with Jim Beyers, VP of Engineering Enablement at CVS Health. Jim joined CVS a year ago to lead an effort to build an internal developer platform. Abi and Jim discuss how Jim joined CVS to build an internal developer platform, what brought him to the job, and how the developer experience fits into the broader transformation goals of CVS. Additionally, this episode covers building the team, defining a strategy, and how he's thinking about winning the hearts and minds across his organization. Discussion points: Mentions and links: LinkedInTarget Application Platform

This week we spoke with Nils Loodin, Platform Product Manager at Spotify. Nils describes how his role in platform product management works, including unique challenges, approaches, and career considerations. Nils also discusses some of the recent changes within Spotify's platform organization, including shifting teams from tech-centric to journey-centric. Discussion points: Mentions and links: LinkedInThe product management discipline in platform teams | Russ Nealis (Plaid)Engineering blog

This week we’re joined by Justin Wright and Matthew Dimich, who lead Platform Engineering and Engineering Enablement at Thomson Reuters. Justin and Matt give an inside look at how they’ve evolved their organization’s structure and approach over the past 8 years. Discussion points: Mentions and links: JustinMattPlatform as a Product

This week’s episode dives into the DORA research program and this year’s State of DevOps Report. Nathen Harvey, who leads DORA at Google, shares the key findings from the research and what’s changed since previous reports. Discussion points: Mentions and links: Nathen on LinkedInprevious episode2023 State of Devops ReportDORA Quick CheckDocumentation is like sunshineDORA communityDevEx: What Actually Drives Productivity

This week we’re joined by Preeti Kota, the Head of Engineering for Compass at Atlassian. Preeti walks us through Atlassian’s journey with developer experience: including how they measure DevEx, and how they drive improvements through efforts at both the organization and team levels. Preeti also talks about how this journey has led to the development of Atlassian’s newly released internal developer portal, Compass. Mentions and links: Learn about CompassLinkedInkey to unlocking developer productivity Discussion points:

This week we’re joined by Mark Côté, who leads the Developer Infrastructure organization at Shopify, to learn about their developer survey program. Mark shares what went into designing and running the survey, what they’ve done to drive participation rates higher, and how they interpret their data. Mentions and links: LinkedInengineering blogDiscussion points:

Thomas Khalil, Head of Platform and SRE at Trivago, describes how the teams reporting into him are structured, the tactics they’re using to increase awareness of their work, and how they demonstrate their impact. Discussion points: Mentions and links: Connect with Thomas on LinkedIn

This week’s guest is Jenny McClain, who leads R&D Team Enablement at Toast. Jenny’s team focuses on enabling individual teams at Toast to drive their own productivity improvements, and this conversation dives into how they tackle this problem. Discussion points: Mentions and links: Follow Jenny on LinkedIn Tuckman’s stages of group development Working Agreements template from Steve Sobel, Director of Engineering at Toast - one of the resources featured in Toast’s Team Health Toolkit