Growing the Developer Experience

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Growing the Developer Experience Chris O’Dell https://www.flickr.com/photos/spurekar/45888718075/

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https://twitter.com/einarwh/status/1197468002670788615

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3 Chris O’Dell - @chrisannodell Chris O’Dell @ChrisAnnODell Backend Engineer at Monzo

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4 Chris O’Dell - @chrisannodell Chris O’Dell @ChrisAnnODell Backend Engineer at Monzo

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5 Chris O’Dell - @chrisannodell Chris O’Dell @ChrisAnnODell Backend Engineer at Monzo

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6 Chris O’Dell - @chrisannodell Chris O’Dell @ChrisAnnODell Backend Engineer at Monzo

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7 Chris O’Dell - @chrisannodell Chris O’Dell @ChrisAnnODell Backend Engineer at Monzo

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8 Chris O’Dell - @chrisannodell Chris O’Dell @ChrisAnnODell Backend Engineer at Monzo

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Who’s heard of Monzo?

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Monzo - Banking made easy

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https://monzo.com/blog/2016/09/19/building-a-modern-bank-backend

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https://twitter.com/JackKleeman/status/1190354757308862468

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1500+ Microservices?

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https://www.flickr.com/photos/yenidem/2642922427/ 1500+ Microservices!

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https://twitter.com/JackKleeman/status/1190973434601324544

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Developer Experience?

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https://www.flickr.com/photos/shelingraziela/6818740028/ We think of the customer experience

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Tools, tools, tools

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Tools tend to be neglected

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Bottlenecks only visible to the developers https://www.flickr.com/photos/pasukaru76/3536398005/

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Why focus on Dev Experience? ‍

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The science of devops

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https://puppet.com/resources/report/2017-state-devops-report/

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https://puppet.com/resources/report/2017-state-devops-report/

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Continuous Delivery

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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 ✅ ‍

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Theory of Constraints

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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https://www.flickr.com/photos/dizmangphotography/15147528554/ Developer Platform Team

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https://flickr.com/photos/usdagov/16868596822 Treated it like Engineers

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Collecting data

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https://www.flickr.com/photos/boston_public_library/4660693196/ Treat Dev Experience like a product

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https://www.flickr.com/photos/sitsgirls/8634796850/ User Research Starter Kit

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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 ‍ ‍♀

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A touch of Cognitive Psychology https://www.flickr.com/photos/nymphofox/6865406105/

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Choosing a Research Method https://www.flickr.com/photos/andreas-kollmorgen/8215056162/

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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Surveys https://pixnio.com/science/aiktak-plant-identification-data-collection

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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

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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 ✨

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Interviews https://www.flickr.com/photos/garryknight/44234176112/

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56 Chris O’Dell - @chrisannodell Prepare for the interviews Define cohorts Prepare script Hold interviews ☕

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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

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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:

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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 ✍

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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

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What we changed https://www.flickr.com/photos/jesusbranch/4185211886/

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64 Chris O’Dell - @chrisannodell Continuous account signup in staging

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65 Chris O’Dell - @chrisannodell PR updates in Slack

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66 Chris O’Dell - @chrisannodell Web deployments standardised

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Not all changes were code https://www.flickr.com/photos/taedc/26736736825/

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68 Chris O’Dell - @chrisannodell Staging Helper

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Repeat the survey https://www.flickr.com/photos/janitors/14413221265/

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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 ‍ ⏩

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72 Chris O’Dell - @chrisannodell Survey results - requests Faster builds and rollouts More visibility around what has gone wrong so we can start debugging

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73 Chris O’Dell - @chrisannodell Improved log aggregation ‍

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What about the metrics?

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https://www.flickr.com/photos/26424952@N00/9813303983/ More Platform Teams

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To summarise https://www.flickr.com/photos/skyseeker/10211713845/

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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 ‍♀ ‍

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Chris O’Dell @ChrisAnnODell Backend Engineer at Monzo Thank you ♀