Maximizing Developer Effectiveness

After commitment, measurement and empowerment comes scaling.

https://martinfowler.com/articles/developer-effectiveness.html

Working environment

“When we look into these scenarios, a primary reason for the problems is that the engineering organization has neglected to provide developers with an effective working environment. While transforming, they have introduced too many new processes, too many new tools and new technologies, which has led to increased complexity and added friction in their everyday tasks.”

Micro Feedback Loops

“I recommend focusing on optimizing these loops, making them fast and simple. Measure the length of the feedback loop, the constraints, and the resulting outcome. When new tools and techniques are introduced, these metrics can clearly show the degree to which developer effectiveness is improved or at least isn’t worse.”

“The key loops I have identified are:

“It is hard to explain to management why we have to focus on such small problems. Why do we have to invest time to optimize a compile stage with a two minute runtime to instead take only 15 seconds? This might be a lot of work, perhaps requiring a system to be decoupled into independent components. It is much easier to understand optimizing something that is taking two days as something worth taking on.”

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