Let's say you're the CEO of a tech startup and you have a great idea of this digital product that's going to useful to thousands of people (you might make money and get little fame). Behind this idea, there's a group of developers who would be tasked in bringing this product to life. The difficulty in the creation of this product depends on a number of components; for example,
- the complexity of the technology being used,
- the architecture.
- the experience of the developers implementing the architecture.
- Developer experience.
You might have an idea on how to effectively deal with the first three, but, what is developer experience and just how important is it?
Developer Experience?
The first hurdle you're going to face as CEO, is the realization, that developers are hard to find and really hard to keep. Why? they're a number of reasons. Programming gets rough, tough, and frustrated developers that see the project as boring, difficult, or inconvenient might leave. Another reason is the developer experience
Developer experience has no clear definition as its still a young concept. A lot of people often compare it to user experience.
User experience is caring about users. Developer experience is caring about developers.
Developer experience (DX) can be pinned on two factors;
- the experience developers have with a tool
- the experience developers have in their company.
You could say that those two factors are linked, and can influence each other.
Understanding the problem.
It’s time to accept your developers need as much care as your customers do.
Developers' work are tasking, they tackle a lot of problems trying to meet specific objectives. Removing the roadblocks they face will no doubt boost productivity. The three common problems developers tackle due to non-existent developer experience are;
Poor documentation
Poor documentation ranks second in the category of "Challenges at work" in Stack overflow's 2016 survey of developers. Adjusting projects with unpredictable, non-documented logic is infuriating. Developers will flee from such at the first chance they get.
Flexibility
Making developers consistently work on similar issues, with the same languages and technologies can bring about exhausted, unmotivated developers whom you risk losing. Permitting them to experiment can bring about upgrades and creative new features to your application.
No clear syntax
Most times, developers are introduced to the codebase and they have a hard time finding out what is going on. Some difference in programming style is acceptable, but if your employees have to work with 5 different syntaxes used for one component, their productivity will soon dip. It makes more sense to groom the developers you have by understanding what they need to feel empowered.
Improving DX
source : stackoverflow
On a scale of 1-10, how satisfied are your developers with the work they do?, how can you make a normal workday better for your developers?. These are the questions you have to answer if you want to improve the DX in your company. Improving DX is a constant process that should be done regularly. You might also have to consider the following factors in helping you improve DX;
- Team survey.
- Giving your developers some form of autonomy.
- Proper internal documentation
- Choose tools that have a strong community or ecosystem.
- Choose tools that abstracts complexity.
- Streamline internal policies and processes.
How important is DX?
Employees can't just chin up and work. DX has become a reality that leaders can’t dismiss if they want to catch and retain talent. An example would be remote work, companies who haven't adopted remote work are losing employees faster than others who have, as developers would rather focus on getting the job done instead of spending unnecessary time commuting to work.
The fact is that optimizing DX must be an essential goal as it’s directly connected to reducing employee churn. In the long run, it brings out the best performance from people regardless of the frequent changes on the product roadmap.
Not adopting DX means your developer’s effectiveness reducing drastically. Once they start leaving, word may spread that your project is unfriendly, which then leads to bad reviews on Glassdoor. Trust me, you don't need the bad publicity.
Conclusion
One of the easiest ways to make a developer happy is to provide a good developer experience. Ensuring that the technologies selected provides the best developer experience possible will help in the creation of systems that are easier to implement and release. Developing software is hard, there is limitation to making it easier. Good developer experience is one of the best ways to create software that matters.