Engineering Success: The Manager’s Guide to Boosting Developer Productivity

A presentation at Tech Leadership Summit 2023 in December 2023 in Clearwater Beach, Clearwater, FL, USA by Baruch Sadogursky

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It’s harsh out there

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It’s harsh out there

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It’s harsh out there

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Layoff Survivor Sickness

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Happiness or productivity? Pick two.

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Baruch Sadogursky - @jbaru ch × Developer Productivity Advocate × Gradle Inc × Development -> DevOps -> #DPE

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shownotes × × × × speaking.jbaru.ch Slides Video All the links!

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Five ways tech debt comprom ise your business

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Analysis Paralysis

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Developer productivity Enginee ring!

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Developer Productivity Enginee Foster Faster Feedback Collaborate through Effective Tooling Eliminate Toil for Developers Dedicated Organizational Mindset ring Embrace Rigorous Observability for Proactive Improvement Prioritize Automation and Eliminate Bottlenecks Outcomes Over Output

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Developer Productivity == A/M Autonomy /P == motivation Tools and people aren’t in my way Mastery Tools and processes help me to excel Purpose I want to be productive, i.e. create the product

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Developer Productivity Enginee Foster Faster Feedback ring

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Don’t ruin the flow

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“The build takes forever, I am distracted to do other things and the context switch is terrible”

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Developer Productivity Enginee Eliminate Toil for Developers ring Prioritize Automation and Eliminate Bottlenecks

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Don’t frustrate the developers

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“we have a flaky test, it is irrelevant 99.5% of the time , but it always runs and it is last in the suite”

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Developer Productivity Enginee ring Embrace Rigorous Observability for Proactive Improvement Outcomes Over Output

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Don’t boil the frog

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“I have a feeling that everything is slower somehow…”

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Developer Productivity Enginee ring Collaborate through Effective Tooling Eliminate Toil for Developers Outcomes Over Output

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Collaborate effectively

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“People send me screenshots of exception messages”

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Developer Productivity Enginee Dedicated Organizational Mindset ring

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Should we try Agile and DevOps?

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Agile/DevOps vs DPE The product More productive work On everybody’s minds Slips away Organizational culture Specialized team

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The best DPE organizations build focused teams

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But we really don’t have the budget for it!

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Non–product (a.k.a. Infrastru × × × × × cture teams) “DevOps Team” “Platform Team” ”Core Services Team” “Infrastructure Team” “Build, CI/CD and Release Team”

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How about “Developer joy team”

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Ok, maybe… But how do we measure?!

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Measuring productivity and jo y (good luck) × S atisfaction × P erformance × A ctivity × C ommunication/Collaboration × E fficiency and Flow

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Measuring productivity and jo y (good luck)

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quantitative and qualitative metrics

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DPE Metrics × The biggest problem with measuring productivity is defining productivity × Different types of developers have different workflows and tooling needs × Different types of problems can and should be solved on different levels

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FEDERAL STATE LOCAL

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Metric-based DPE implementation Identify & nominate Im em l p t en Present Ask & measure & ze i t i ior rove r P p Im Evaluate

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Engineer your engineers’ succ ess with DPE × It improves morale × It covers productivity gaps × It’s the right thing to do for both the employees and the business × But it requires an organizational mindset and a dedicated effort! × It’s hard to measure because it’s a human problem

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× × × × × Engineer your engineers’ succ ess with DPE Ask your developers Define scope Prioritize and don’t try to boil the ocean Use existing infrastructure resources Use small wins to promote the cause

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Learn more and try it today! × × × × Take the Gradle/Maven Speed Challenge! Be DPE Agent of Change! Read the DPE Handbook! Watch the DPE Summit videos! x speaking.jbaru.ch

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