How to measure and improve developer productivity | Nicole Forsgren (Microsoft Research, Github)

Dr. Nicole Forsgren is a developer productivity and DevOps expert who works with engineering organizations to make work better. Best known as co-author of the Shingo Publication Award-winning book Accelerate and the DevOps Handbook, 2nd edition and author of the State of DevOps Reports, she has helped some of the biggest companies in the world transform their culture, processes, tech, and architecture. Nicole is currently a Partner at Microsoft Research, leading developer productivity research and strategy, and a technical founder/CEO with a successful exit to Google. In a previous life, she was a software engineer, sysadmin, hardware performance engineer, and professor. She has published several peer-reviewed journal papers, has been awarded public and private research grants (funders include NASA and the NSF), and has been featured in the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Computerworld, and InformationWeek. In today’s podcast, we discuss:
• Two frameworks for measuring developer productivity: DORA and SPACE
• Benchmarks for what good and great look like
• Common mistakes to avoid when measuring developer productivity
• Resources and tools for improving your metrics
• Signs your developer experience needs attention
• How to improve your developer experience
• Nicole’s Four-Box framework for thinking about data and relationships
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This episode is brought to you by DX-a platform for measuring and improving developer productivity: getdx.com/lenny
Find the full transcript at: www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/ho...
Where to find Nicole Forsgren:
• Twitter: / nicolefv
• LinkedIn: / nicolefv
• Website: nicolefv.com/
Where to find Lenny:
• Newsletter: www.lennysnewsletter.com
• Twitter: / lennysan
• LinkedIn: / lennyrachitsky
In this episode, we cover:
(00:00) Nicole’s background
(07:55) Unpacking the terms “developer productivity,” “developer experience,” and “DevOps”
(10:06) How to move faster and improve practices across the board
(13:43) The DORA framework
(18:54) Benchmarks for success
(22:33) Why company size doesn’t matter
(24:54) How to improve DevOps capabilities by working backward
(29:23) The SPACE framework and choosing metrics
(32:51) How SPACE and DORA work together
(35:39) Measuring satisfaction
(37:52) Resources and tools for optimizing metrics
(41:29) Nicole’s current book project
(45:43) Common pitfalls companies run into when rolling out developer productivity/optimizations
(47:42) How the DevOps space has progressed
(50:07) The impact of AI on the developer experience and productivity
(54:04) First steps to take if you’re trying to improve the developer experience
(55:15) Why Google is an example of a company implementing DevOps solutions well
(56:11) The importance of clear communication
(57:32) Nicole’s Four-Box framework
(1:05:15) Advice on making decisions
(1:08:56) Lightning round
Referenced:
• Chef: www.chef.io/
• DORA: dora.dev/
• GitHub: github.com/
• Microsoft Research: www.microsoft.com/en-us/resea...
• What is DORA?: devops.com/what-is-dora-and-w...
• Dustin Smith on LinkedIn: / dustin-smith-b0525458
• Nathen Harvey on LinkedIn: / nathen
• What is CI/CD?: about.gitlab.com/topics/ci-cd/
• Trunk-based development: cloud.google.com/architecture...
• DORA DevOps Quick Check: dora.dev/quickcheck/
• Accelerate: The Science of Lean Software and DevOps: Building and Scaling High Performing Technology Organizations: www.amazon.com/Accelerate-Sof...
• The SPACE of Developer Productivity: queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=3...
• DevOps Metrics: Nicole Forsgren and Mik Kersten: queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=3...
• How to Measure Anything: Finding the Value of Intangibles in Business: www.amazon.com/How-Measure-An...
• GitHub Copilot: github.com/features/copilot
• Tabnine: www.tabnine.com/the-leading-a...
• Nicole’s Decision-Making Spreadsheet: docs.google.com/spreadsheets/...
• How to do linear regression and correlation analysis: www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/li...
Find all lightning round references at: www.lennyspodcast.com/
Production and marketing by penname.co/. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email [e-mail].
Lenny may be an investor in the companies discussed.

[@vjeraturk]

12:56 We can highlight a handful of Statistics like - what is your typical time for feature delivery - what is your typical time to the first PR - what is your typical time to study state productivity - what is your typical time for code review and PR processes AND if we do a rough look at the industry what are your peers spending here AND are we losing time And if we can turn it into Value Calculation - what does that look like? 17:20 What is most important is knowing where you are and the progress you are making 20:59 Do you have fast feedback loops - or are you gonna wait for that final review for 3 months - is something gonna happen or break - and when it comes back to the developer are they gonna have to insert themselves back to the code, re-review all the things that happened 3 months ago - which is very hard - and this is how it relates to the Developer experience 42:15 Culture and frictions in toolchains 48:10 We have to be better at this - now what is important - ideas are unimportant - execution is important - now it is about creating incredibly novel and creative experiences and doing them at a speed that no one has seen before - the only way to do this is to have this software pipeline that is fast, and is safe, and is stable and is reliable. 56:25 Making your work incredibly accessible - making it very easy to understand what you are doing for your key audience - doing that and thinking about doing that for anyone who is listening for all of your work is super important. So who is it that your audience is, what is their role what words resonates with them (and what don't) and always being able to translate your work into a few sentences, a paragraph or less

[@Dtsun16]

This was incredibly helpful and timely for me. Thanks to both of you! ❤

[@prabhdeepsingh3505]

Thank you, Lenny, This is so informative.

[@alvaro.f]

Great episode, thank you both for sharing it!

[@exto10]

Mange the team by using measure of effectiveness for your leadership team. Measure their leadership ability based on criteria valued and prioritized by each member on this team.

[@KatuneArt_123]

Thank you for sharing the beautiful video, wish you a lot of happiness and health

[@theokratos2362]

Amazing ❤

[@richmondegyiri7200]

Task 8 complete

[@vjeraturk]

20:59 Do you have fast feedback loops - or are you gonna wait for that final review for 3 months - is something gonna happen or break - and when it comes back to the developer are they gonna have to insert themselves back to the code, re-review all the things that happened 3 months ago - which is very hard - and this is how it relates to the Developer experience

[@BelloAminat-jz2pz]

Great one

[@LennysPodcast]

Thank you!

[@fiona2912]

Great

[@teddyjohn2971]

❤

[@vjeraturk]

25:42

[@castoneydebarber9770]

It seems like learning

[@vjeraturk]

21:21

[@richmondegyiri7200]

Tàsk 8 complete

[@smarasan]

Why is it always about developer productivity like extracting the max from a machine? Where and what is the measure of Pdm productivity or Manager productivity out Designer productivity?

[@FranzAllanSee]

Increasing developer productivity usually means making the devs lives easier Dora, space, devex - all of those are trying to make dev lives easier If somebody's trying to increase developer productivity in your organization and it makes your life harder, then they're doing it wrong

[@justacoder444]

modern addiction to productivity. People come up with lots of models of how to be more efficient, while real practical advancements (employee happiness, making processes simpler, etc. ..) are not being looked at 🚣

[@mazarin6945]

You have 10x devs on a Product manager, so it makes more sense. Next to that, a dev builds, a PM does not add directly to the build. For a Product Manager you would probably look more at effectiveness

[@vjeraturk]

She sees DevOps as more holistic than a developer does. She says at 26:18 how DevOps is lean Managment Practices.

[@goblintown6053]

yoooo gonna be grindin' for them SDBN2 tokens all summer long, no time for sleep😴