Developer Experience

By the end

What you'll build

• Describe developer experience in terms of friction, flow and feedback, and locate where time is actually lost
• Run a developer experience survey and interview set that gets honest answers, with anonymity handled properly
• Combine self-reported signal with system data without over-claiming causation
• Reduce inner-loop time from edit to test, including local and production parity
• Identify and remove queue time in the path to production and name who owns each queue
• Turn a friction log into a prioritised improvement backlog with a measured baseline

Curriculum

What's inside

7 modules · 35 lessons

1. 01

   Defining developer experience

   5 lessons
   • Friction, flow and feedback: a working model of developer experience
   • Experience and productivity are not the same measure
   • Where time actually goes in a working day
   • Cognitive load revisited as a design target
   • Say it precisely: the three-part modelmatch pairs
2. 02

   Research methods

   5 lessons
   • Running a developer experience survey people answer honestly
   • Interviews, diary studies and shadowing
   • Sampling, anonymity and psychological safety
   • Combining self-reported and system data
   • Design the study before you send itfill blank
3. 03

   The inner loop

   5 lessons
   • Shortening the edit, build and test loop
   • Local environments and parity with production
   • From joining a team to a first safe change
   • Documentation as part of the experience, not an afterthought
   • Shorten the inner loop without breaking itsequence order
4. 04

   The outer loop

   5 lessons
   • Removing waiting from the path to production
   • Review, approval and queue time
   • Environment availability and contention
   • Release friction and who owns each step
   • Thirty-one hours to mergescenario
5. 05

   Designing interfaces for humans

   5 lessons
   • Error messages that tell a developer what to do next
   • Naming, defaults and discoverability
   • Progressive disclosure in platform tooling
   • Accessible and inclusive internal tooling
   • What the interface is telling the developermatch pairs
6. 06

   Running an improvement programme

   5 lessons
   • From a friction log to a prioritised backlog
   • Baselining and re-measuring the same way twice
   • Choosing a small number of improvements
   • Reporting change without inflating the claim
   • Make the improvement claim hold upfill blank
7. 07

   Practice and check

   5 lessons
   • Say what you actually meanmatch pairs
   • From complaint to a change you can provesequence order
   • Naming the problem accuratelyfill blank
   • The platform is painfulscenario
   • Course quizquiz

The shape of it

How this course works