Developer Productivity Engineering: What’s in it for me?

Developer Productivity Engineering (DPE) is the Next Big Thing in Software Development. But what is it? How will it foster Developer Joy? And how can you introduce it to your organization?

Abstract

It may surprise you to learn that we developers are a patient, tolerant species. People pay us to do what we enjoy - write code and create working applications. In return, we will put up with all sorts of blockages and toil that get in the way of this - long build times, flaky tests, hard-to-debug toolchain failures and so on.

Is this truly the price we need to pay? Could there be a better world, where the build is as fast as it could possibly be? A world where problems that affect many developers are quickly identified and fixed?

Welcome to the world of Developer Productivity Engineering, where we can get computers to do what they’re good at (automation) to make developers’ lives easier, and make us more effective at our jobs. And while developer joy may be a difficult thing to sell to decision-makers, effective developers who are making the best use of their time, and their hardware, have a direct impact on an organization’s ROI.

In this talk, Trisha will explore what DPE is, give you some practical ways to get started, and discuss ways to help the leaders in your organisation to understand the enormous value DPE could unlock.

Resources

Slides

Video

Video of the version at DevBcn in 2023.

Try it

  • Build speed challenge - follow these instructions to see how build caching can improve your build's performance (Maven and Gradle)
  • Take a look at the Develocity instances for these OSS Projects - click around Develocity and see what it offers

Further reading

Next steps

Author

  • Trisha Gee

    Trisha is a software engineer, Java Champion and author. Trisha has developed Java applications for finance, manufacturing and non-profit organisations, and she's a lead developer advocate at Gradle.

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