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Designing the
Developer Experience
Tanja Bach & Jacob Bo Tiedemann @jabopiti
YConf Online Conference | October 15, 2020 | #YConf2020 #DeveloperExperience
© 2020 ThoughtWorks

2© 2020 ThoughtWorks
Sponge-like learner.
Always in search of ‘the why’.
Agile Advocate.
Loves Berliner.
BUSINESS ANALYST
TANJA BACH “We empower teams to
seamlessly deliver.”
CLOUD INFRASTRUCTURE
“We accelerate and simplify the
software lifecycle for developers.”
IOT PLATFORM
Once Working as Dev.
Product Focused.
Hamburger.
Loves Pancakes.
BUSINESS ANALYST
JACOB BO TIEDEMANN

3© 2020 ThoughtWorks
“DX describes the experience developers have when they use your product”
- Sam Jarman
What is Developer Experience?
Source: https://xkcd.com/303/

How we
designed
Developer
Experiences
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PO
Devs
User
Dev
User
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Devs
PO
I’ve been in Sales for
>5 years. I know what
the customer needs.
I would do it this
way .. trust me I am
a Dev.
Figuring out what the user actually needs.
Who is the Know-it-all?
UX
DX

❏ Identify the pain points that developers
have
❏ Helps developers on your team learn that
their customers’ needs might be different
from their own
❏ Look out for related personas to identify
their - sometimes conflicting - goals
(eg. product owner, compliance officer)
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Developer Personas
Understand the needs of your users
© 2020 ThoughtWorks

Billing
is not
transparent
Insufficient
Monitoring
Tools
Slow
Scaling of
Computing
Power
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Manual
Steps
Late / Lack
of Feedback
Complex
Onboarding &
Knowledge
Sharing
Developers Biggest Pain Points
Some Examples
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Developer J urney
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Set up
Dev Machine
Getting Started & Setup
Create
Resources
Access
Dev Portal
Read Docu-
mentation
Local Development
Test
Code
Debug
Push /
Deliver
Build
Run
Test Vehicle
Monitor
Release &
Operate
Package Release
Set up
Test Bench
Test Bench
Inspect
Deploy

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Design isn’t just about pixels
User Interfaces for Developers
API
Application
Programming interface
PORTAL
Graphical User
Interface
CLI
Command Line
Interface

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Easy to Learn but Efficient to Use
Memorable but Typable
1. Always provide help
2. Consistent & structured naming
3. Show progress
4. Avoid implicit steps
5. Use expressive flags
6. Prompt if you can, but never require it
7. ...
8. Be fancy
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Command Line Interface
Design Guidelines
Text-based User Interface

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Challenges
we faced in
the design
process

“Would you invest in something you do not
understand?”
Most probably not.
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POLL
Do you know what
transit services are?

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Translate from Tech to Business
Internet
endpoints
(plugs)
endpoint
services
(sockets)
Public Cloud ProviderClient Premises
App
System
ABC
System
XYZ
Secure Connection AppABC
XYZ
Understanding is key to getting buy-in (Transit services in 2 minutes)
Firewall
Firewall

User Stories are your Friend
Story Title: Terraform plan to apply
Even ‘technical’ stories have a reason
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© 2020 ThoughtWorks
As a developer
I WANT faster pipelines
SO THAT I can reduce waiting time and resources used
- Watch out for the why
- Remember the 5 Why’s
- Defer conversations about the ‘How’
- Foster a proper story conversation

- DevOps is a new mindset
- It requires people that have not
collaborated before to work closely
together
- Paramount for success in modern
infrastructure projects
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Build relationships
Makes your life easier

Go-to metrics with external platforms
- Weekly active users
- Time to first hello world
Challenge: Internal Platforms
- Generally no other choice
- Our metric: Net Promoter Score (NPS)
- Find sth to measure against
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Measuring DX
How to measure value?

Helping the
Developer
Benefits the
Business
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Enable
EXPERIMENTS
Increase
FLEXIBILITY
Accelerate
DELIVERY
Save
COSTS
Promote
QUALITY
Attract
TALENT

Enable remote updates and test
automation reduces cycle time of testing
on hardware from 2-3 weeks to 2-6
hours.
Developers benefit from
Faster Feedback Cycles.
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Literally Removing
Manual Steps

Self-Service for teams leads to autonomy.
Autonomy speeds time to market and
increases innovation.
A supportive infrastructure, the right tools
and flexible processes support
developers in their ‘jobs-to-be done’.
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Flexibility = Speed
Flexibility enables Agile Delivery

“I want to work for a company which is open for modern
technologies. Sounds pretty obvious right? It isn’t.
Looking at job offers here in Germany, I see that most companies
prefer established technologies which are at least 30 yrs on the
market. [...]”
Answer to the question on Quora
‘What should every software developer look for in a job?’
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Attract & Retain
TALENT

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Helping the developer,
Benefits the business.
DX matters -
also to Business
Invest time to learn, explain, and
build a shared understanding.
Translate
from Tech to Biz
© 2020 ThoughtWorks
Developers are Users too
… and Designers :)
You can use the design tools you
know.
DX is
UX for Developers

Tanja Bach
Business Analyst
tanja.bach@thoughtworks.com
23© 2020 ThoughtWorks
Jacob Bo Tiedemann
Business Analyst
jacob.tiedemann@thoughtworks.com | @jabopiti thoughtworks.com
#YConf2020 | #DeveloperExperience