As a platform engineer, how do you help your customers go quicker? Which aspects of developer experience should you care about? More importantly, how do you curate an experience for them?
A recent InfoQ article from Andy Burgin focuses on how to curate a developer’s experience. It describes his experience, what his company learned from implementing DevEx, and what you, as a platform engineer, can do to create a developer experience for the development teams that use your platforms. He explains all the practical things his team did, what worked (and what didn’t), how success was measured, and how the team’s focus has evolved over the years.
Key takeaways include:
- Developer experience (DevEx) goes beyond productivity, encompassing aspects like ease of use, collaboration, and empathy. It addresses a sociotechnical problem by creating relationships and engagement.
- Creating a positive DevEx involves understanding developer needs and challenges, fostering collaboration, and continuously using feedback loops to improve platform usability.
- It’s often a people problem, not a tooling problem. Tooling needs to help engineers "shift left" and genuinely empower users rather than being a burden or unused shelfware.
- Practical steps like running annual surveys, creating usability metrics, and fostering continuous engagement with users can help the team track progress and identify areas for improvement over time.
- As development teams mature, they can ideally integrate the DevEx function into day-to-day operations. Effective DevEx efforts can lead to self-sufficient teams with reduced reliance on platform engineers.
This content is an excerpt from a recent InfoQ article by Andy Burgin, "Curating Developer Experience: Practical Insights from Building a Platform Team".
To get notifications when InfoQ publishes content on these topics, follow "Platform Engineering", "DevOps", and "Team Collaboration" on InfoQ.
Missed a newsletter? You can find all of the previous issues on InfoQ.
Sponsored
|
|
As cloud-native apps grow, APIs are crucial but often lack strong security, making them prime targets for bad actors. OAuth helps but lacks guidelines for API tokens, leading to vulnerabilities. Using cloud-native components in Kubernetes, organizations can implement a zero-trust, scalable security architecture. This book delves into OAuth’s architectural benefits and its role in building zero trust security frameworks. Discover how to realize the full benefits of OAuth, secure API access in cloud-native environments, and update your zero-trust security architecture.
Download the early release chapters from “Cloud Native Data Security with OAuth”, sponsored by Curity
|
|
Upcoming Events
InfoQ and QCon: For practitioners, by practitioners
QCon San Francisco 2024, Nov 18-22
Training topics announced. Upskill on the issues that matter most in software development with domain experts in our practical, hands-on training days on November 21-22. Deep dive into topics including team topologies, ML, Rust, domain-driven design, Gen AI, and more. Early bird discount ends October 1. Explore the training days.
QCon London 2025, Apr 7-9
QCon London will bring together senior developers and architects for deep dives into the latest emerging trends, best practices, and use cases. The 15 tracks include AI, ML, FinTech, modern architectures, security, leadership, and more! Early bird discount ends October 1. Explore the tracks.
