There is a very good possibility that your engineers won't be productive if they are unhappy. These three areas are where you may concentrate to help your organisation enhance the developer experience.
The success of your company depends in large part on its developers. Whether your business sells software or employs custom software to accomplish tasks, your developers are responsible for doing the hard work of making that programme a reality.
In order to achieve that, you may have invested a great lot of time and energy in finding the perfect team. Superstars that can provide the goods and help your business run more smoothly, efficiently, and even profitably are on your payroll.
Initially, the crew performs far above your expectations, operating like a well-oiled machine. Your programmers are productive, content, and cooperative.
Everything is going exactly as planned.
Until it doesn’t.
One or more of your developers will eventually become frustrated with the current situation. The team might start to feel that way more and more until everything breaks down.
Why did that take place? Most likely as a result of your lack of attention during DevEx.
DevEx stands for “developer experience” and focuses on how developers think/feel about and value their work. At first blush, you might assume that because you’ve given everyone on the team all the tools they could possibly need, you’ve taken care of DevEx.
It’s much more than that.
Developers frequently have to cope with interruptions, impossibly tight deadlines, extremely difficult challenges, conflict with management, code errors, improperly suited tools, budget problems, and an endless stream of jobs. Any of these issues has the potential to halt a developer's advancement and productivity.
There is no getting around the difficulty of development work.
Think about this. There may be supervisors who feel that regular progress updates are necessary. A manager might feel better about dropping by to see one or more of the team members than monitoring the project's Kanban board. The duration of each pop-in by that manager may only be 5 or 10 minutes. However, that does not imply that a developer has just encountered a 5 or 10-minute setback. Developers, you see, enter a flow state. Resuming that flow after a break requires some time. Thus, a sidebar that seemed to last only five or ten minutes could actually cause a 30-minute disruption to productivity.
If those interruptions continue throughout the day, they compound and make it harder and harder to achieve deadlines.
You might witness a sharp decline in production unless DevEx is given the consideration it merits.
But how can DevEx be improved quickly? You might be shocked to learn that it doesn't need much work. In order to make sure that your company's DevEx is strong enough to keep those top team members, let's look at three crucial factors you may concentrate on.
Improve Communication
This is a big one, and it doesn't simply concern having all the tools required to facilitate team member and team communication. The lines of communication are also improved when we talk about improving communication.
Serious issues will arise if managers don't provide developers with regular updates or have trouble sharing ideas with them. Due to the extreme productivity demands placed on today's firms, even the smallest breakdown in communication can have a domino effect.
Everyone in your organisation needs to be enabled to communicate effectively in addition to having the necessary communication tools. Everyone in the chain should be aware of who to speak with, how to do so, and the appropriate times to do so.
So, implementing Slack is not the only step before finishing. Deploying the platform, setting up the required workspaces and channels, and ensuring that everyone engaged is aware of how to use the tool and interact with one another are all important steps.
It's crucial that all parties concerned remain receptive to helpful feedback. When dealing with certain kinds of developers, this can be difficult. The issues that arise when ego comes in the way of communication might be overwhelming. As a result, you want to make sure that everyone is aware that effective communication entails both having the freedom to speak and listening to others without becoming defensive.
In your business, communication must be open and constant.
Reduce Mental Stress
Being a developer is a demanding profession. Not only may the work itself be challenging, but the additional stress of releasing deadlines can intensify that difficulty to the point of overwhelm.
You should do all of your effort to maintain your stress levels as low as possible in order to prevent it from getting out of hand.
It's not always simple, but it's not impossible either.
Here's the ideal strategy for handling this. The first thing you must realise is that providing value to clients is the single most significant responsibility placed on your developers. These clients could be divisions within the organisation, clients from other companies, or even consumers.
You may remove anything impeding the developer's capacity to deliver value once you know what their primary responsibility is.That might mean extraneous tasks (such as billing, timekeeping, or documentation) that compound their workload. One thing to keep in mind is the more tasks you give a developer that isn’t directly related to development, the more stress could become a problem. Think about it. Developers already spend many hours writing code. If they have to add extraneous work to that, they will grow disillusioned and could even seek employment elsewhere.
Encourage a Productive Environment
A room full of cubicles with developers banging away at keyboards may come to mind when you think of a productive workplace. Did you know that for certain individuals, a cubicle represents the worst possible work environment? A cubicle farm also inhibits conversation because everyone can be heard, which is another drawback.
A productive setting is one that enables people present to enter their creative flow, enhancing their effectiveness and efficiency. That might entail giving each developer their own office so they can lock the door, turn on their music, and get to work creating code. A cubicle does not provide the solitude that many developers desire for their job.
That does not imply "playing favourites." If some of your engineers would rather operate in the seclusion of their own offices but your business lacks the necessary infrastructure, take into allowing them to work from home. For those developers that prefer a more open environment, let them stay in your open-concept office where they can hear and be heard at all times.
Knowing what your developers need and want is the aim here. Even though you don't want to pander to their every whim, you do want to establish an environment that they find to be productive. And that's crucial. Instead of using a bulleted checklist you found online, you want to establish a productive workplace that meets the needs of your team. If you're serious about enhancing DevEx, you'll realise that every company, team, and developer has a different approach to it.
In order to truly get DevEx right, you need to understand the developer in addition to enhancing communication, lowering stress, and fostering a productive workplace. You must be open to receiving input from your team members about their workflow in order to achieve this, as well as ready to act on it by making necessary adjustments. Of course, not all criticism is worthwhile. If you're not sure, consider it like this: An opinion expressed by one developer might not be more than that. If numerous developers are complaining about the same thing, there is a problem that has to be fixed.
Ensuring that your developers have agency and that they are aware that you and your management team will consider their suggestions are crucial in this situation.
Just remember, happy developers can make for a productive and profitable environment, and DevEx is at the heart of it all.
