Growing the Developer Experience

Given at Nor(Dev)Con 2020: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YdsR0NNo8hU&list=PLc8-tQY65nvUAZEezrXhzY50-OHovjdfv&index=4

Transcript

1. Growing the Developer Experience Chris O’Dell https://www.flickr.com/photos/spurekar/45888718075/
2. https://twitter.com/einarwh/status/1197468002670788615
3. 3 Chris O’Dell - @chrisannodell Chris O’Dell @ChrisAnnODell Backend Engineer at Monzo
4. 4 Chris O’Dell - @chrisannodell Chris O’Dell @ChrisAnnODell Backend Engineer at Monzo
5. 5 Chris O’Dell - @chrisannodell Chris O’Dell @ChrisAnnODell Backend Engineer at Monzo
6. 6 Chris O’Dell - @chrisannodell Chris O’Dell @ChrisAnnODell Backend Engineer at Monzo
7. 7 Chris O’Dell - @chrisannodell Chris O’Dell @ChrisAnnODell Backend Engineer at Monzo
8. 8 Chris O’Dell - @chrisannodell Chris O’Dell @ChrisAnnODell Backend Engineer at Monzo
9. Who’s heard of Monzo?
10. Monzo - Banking made easy
12. https://monzo.com/blog/2016/09/19/building-a-modern-bank-backend
13. https://twitter.com/JackKleeman/status/1190354757308862468
14. 1500+ Microservices?
15. https://www.flickr.com/photos/yenidem/2642922427/ 1500+ Microservices!
16. https://twitter.com/JackKleeman/status/1190973434601324544
17. Developer Experience?
18. https://www.flickr.com/photos/shelingraziela/6818740028/ We think of the customer experience
19. Tools, tools, tools
20. Tools tend to be neglected
21. Bottlenecks only visible to the developers https://www.flickr.com/photos/pasukaru76/3536398005/
22. Why focus on Dev Experience? ‍
23. The science of devops
24. https://puppet.com/resources/report/2017-state-devops-report/
25. https://puppet.com/resources/report/2017-state-devops-report/
26. Continuous Delivery
27. 27 Chris O’Dell - @chrisannodell Continuous Delivery Principles Build quality in Work in small batches Computers perform repetitive tasks, people solve problems Relentlessly pursue continuous improvement Everyone is responsible ✅ ‍
29. Theory of Constraints
30. 30 Chris O’Dell - @chrisannodell Theory of Constraints Identify the constraint Exploit the constraint Subordinate everything to the Constraint Elevate the constraint Repeat The Five Focussing Steps
31. 31 Chris O’Dell - @chrisannodell Theory of Constraints Identify the constraint Find the weakest link in the chain Exploit the constraint Subordinate everything to the Constraint Elevate the constraint Repeat The Five Focussing Steps
32. 32 Chris O’Dell - @chrisannodell Theory of Constraints Identify the constraint Find the weakest link in the chain Exploit the constraint Use it to its maximum Subordinate everything to the Constraint Elevate the constraint Repeat The Five Focussing Steps
33. 33 Chris O’Dell - @chrisannodell Theory of Constraints Identify the constraint Find the weakest link in the chain Exploit the constraint Use it to its maximum Subordinate everything to the Constraint Make everything else wait Elevate the constraint Repeat The Five Focussing Steps
34. 34 Chris O’Dell - @chrisannodell Theory of Constraints Identify the constraint Find the weakest link in the chain Exploit the constraint Use it to its maximum Subordinate everything to the Constraint Make everything else wait Elevate the constraint Pay to expand the bottleneck Repeat The Five Focussing Steps
35. 35 Chris O’Dell - @chrisannodell Theory of Constraints Identify the constraint Find the weakest link in the chain Exploit the constraint Use it to its maximum Subordinate everything to the Constraint Make everything else wait Elevate the constraint Pay to expand the bottleneck Repeat Start again (maybe there’s a new bottleneck) The Five Focussing Steps
36. https://www.flickr.com/photos/dizmangphotography/15147528554/ Developer Platform Team
37. https://flickr.com/photos/usdagov/16868596822 Treated it like Engineers
38. Collecting data
42. https://www.flickr.com/photos/boston_public_library/4660693196/ Treat Dev Experience like a product
43. https://www.flickr.com/photos/sitsgirls/8634796850/ User Research Starter Kit
44. 44 Chris O’Dell - @chrisannodell User Research Starter Kit https://monzo.com/blog/2019/05/30/everyone-does-user-research-at-monzo Cognitive Psychology Research Methods Open Office Hours ‍ ‍♀
45. A touch of Cognitive Psychology https://www.flickr.com/photos/nymphofox/6865406105/
46. Choosing a Research Method https://www.flickr.com/photos/andreas-kollmorgen/8215056162/
47. 47 Chris O’Dell - @chrisannodell Choosing a Research Method Discovery Design & Build Optimisation ‍♀ ‍♀ https://monzo.com/blog/2019/05/30/everyone-does-user-research-at-monzo
48. 48 Chris O’Dell - @chrisannodell Choosing a Research Method Discovery ‍♀ • Depth interviews (phone or in person) • Field visits, or contextual observation • Diary studies • Surveys • Desk research (secondary research) https://monzo.com/blog/2019/05/30/everyone-does-user-research-at-monzo
49. 49 Chris O’Dell - @chrisannodell Choosing a Research Method Design & Build ‍♀ • User testing (in person, remote, lab-based, street) • Unmoderated testing (task completion) • ‘Pre-alpha’ diary study • Tree-testing (findability in menus) https://monzo.com/blog/2019/05/30/everyone-does-user-research-at-monzo
50. 50 Chris O’Dell - @chrisannodell Choosing a Research Method Optimisation • Emails • Phone calls • Surveys https://monzo.com/blog/2019/05/30/everyone-does-user-research-at-monzo
51. 51 Chris O’Dell - @chrisannodell Choosing a Research Method Discovery ‍♀ • Depth interviews (phone or in person) • Field visits, or contextual observation • Diary studies • Surveys • Desk research (secondary research) https://monzo.com/blog/2019/05/30/everyone-does-user-research-at-monzo
52. Surveys https://pixnio.com/science/aiktak-plant-identification-data-collection
53. 53 Chris O’Dell - @chrisannodell The first survey - we made a few mistakes Unnecessary questions Open ended questions Full text answers requiring manual review Difficult to see trends over time
54. 54 Chris O’Dell - @chrisannodell The first survey - we still learned things Majority of engineers felt set up for success Stability of the staging environment was a pain point The local development flow felt slow Web deployments felt slow and were not standardised And many other things ✨
55. Interviews https://www.flickr.com/photos/garryknight/44234176112/
56. 56 Chris O’Dell - @chrisannodell Prepare for the interviews Define cohorts Prepare script Hold interviews ☕
57. 57 Chris O’Dell - @chrisannodell What are our cohorts? Backend Engineer Mobile Engineer Web Engineer Data Science Engineer < 6 months 6 months <> 1 year 1 year <> 2 years 2 years+ Cohort (noun): a group of people with a shared characteristic. Role Time at Monzo
58. 58 Chris O’Dell - @chrisannodell Preparing the script Introduction and why Simple starter questions Open ended questions Jumping straight in Interrogation feel Too many closed questions ⏩ Include: Avoid:
59. 59 Chris O’Dell - @chrisannodell ☕ Arrange and hold the interviews Contact people from your cohorts Explain the purpose of the interview Book in a 30 minute chat Take lots of notes ✍
61. 61 Chris O’Dell - @chrisannodell ‍♀ Gather the findings Pull out common patterns Include some direct quotes Assign a severity (impact + repetition + frequency) Suggest a fix ➿ Create a Findings Log
63. What we changed https://www.flickr.com/photos/jesusbranch/4185211886/
64. 64 Chris O’Dell - @chrisannodell Continuous account signup in staging
65. 65 Chris O’Dell - @chrisannodell PR updates in Slack
66. 66 Chris O’Dell - @chrisannodell Web deployments standardised
67. Not all changes were code https://www.flickr.com/photos/taedc/26736736825/
68. 68 Chris O’Dell - @chrisannodell Staging Helper
69. Repeat the survey https://www.flickr.com/photos/janitors/14413221265/
71. 71 Chris O’Dell - @chrisannodell Positive Survey results 78% satisfaction rating Satisfaction increased with tenure Problems with staging were not mentioned Trouble getting PR reviews wasn’t mentioned either ‍ ⏩
72. 72 Chris O’Dell - @chrisannodell Survey results - requests Faster builds and rollouts More visibility around what has gone wrong so we can start debugging
73. 73 Chris O’Dell - @chrisannodell Improved log aggregation ‍
74. What about the metrics?
75. https://www.flickr.com/photos/26424952@N00/9813303983/ More Platform Teams
76. To summarise https://www.flickr.com/photos/skyseeker/10211713845/
77. 77 Chris O’Dell - @chrisannodell Summary Learn about your flow and find bottlenecks Borrow and apply techniques from User Research Treat the developer flow as a product to improve the experience ‍♀ ‍
78. Chris O’Dell @ChrisAnnODell Backend Engineer at Monzo Thank you ♀