Let developers tell you where the bottlenecks are
The DX surveys are similar to what you might expect if you've read Accelerate – they focus on proven drivers for velocity, and provide insights into which changes will be most impactful across engineering departments.
Everyone wants to be going faster. Including the engineers working on the project. In fact, they are the authority on why they aren't going faster. If you're already doing regular 1:1s, this should not come as a surprise.
On a given team, you might then be able to gather a few data points on where possible friction points are. But I've found it's harder to communicate those trends across teams, because different teams will be working in different areas, towards different success metrics or OKRs, and they might even be using different words.
So I was pretty excited when I found out about a new product offering in getdx.com. It's a simple platform that any engineering organization can adopt in minutes to run quarterly developer experience surveys on a curated set of topics.
It's built by smart people like Abi Noda, Greyson Junggren, Pat Kua, and Gergely Orosz (from Pragmatic Engineer, which has been on a killer run of content: I can fully endorse his premium newsletter).
The DX surveys are similar to what you might expect if you've read Accelerate – they focus on proven drivers for velocity, and provide insights into which changes will be most impactful across engineering departments.
My favourite feature is seeing how an engineering department measures up against industry averages. I can see how that could be a powerful driver, perhaps even to be leveraged as a recruiting advantage.