#198 - Better Software Faster: Measure & Improve Developer Productivity with DX Core 4 - Laura Tacho

Tech Lead Journal

“Now more than ever, engineering leaders are being asked to be more transparent with how their work is getting done. Every single thing that an engineering team works on needs to benefit the business.”

Laura Tacho is the CTO of DX and a leading voice in the world of developer experience and productivity. In this episode, we explore the ever important role of aligning developer experience with business goals and discuss the DX Core 4, a new developer productivity framework recently published by DX.

Laura shares how engineering leaders can leverage intuition for data-driven decisions and effectively communicate the impact of engineering initiatives in business language. We discuss the importance of balancing business goals with engineering needs and delve into the process of building a strong business case for improving developer experience.

Discover the new DX Core 4 framework as Laura breaks down its four dimensions, key metrics, and actionable strategies for measuring and enhancing developer productivity. Learn how DX Core 4 complements existing frameworks, such as DORA, SPACE, and DevEx, and why it suggests “diffs per engineer” as a valuable metric to measure. Understand the Developer Experience Index (DXI) and why internal developer platforms and AI play crucial roles in improving developer experience.

Tune in to learn new valuable insights on developer experience and how to measure, communicate, and improve developer productivity effectively.

Listen out for:

• Career Turning Points - [00:02:13]
• Following Your Intuition - [00:05:36]
• Business Oriented Engineering Leaders - [00:08:06]
• Explaining Tech Debt - [00:12:01]
• Balancing Between Engineering and Business Focus - [00:16:53]
• Building a Case for Improving Developer Experience - [00:21:00]
• DX Core 4 - [00:22:46]
• DX Core 4 vs Others (DORA, SPACE, DevEx) - [00:25:19]
• The DX Core 4 Dimensions - [00:26:49]
• Diffs per Engineer - [00:30:32]
• Impact Dimension - [00:33:27]
• Measuring DX Core 4 - [00:34:59]
• Developer Experience Index (DXI) - [00:38:19]
• Impact of Implementing DX Core 4 - [00:41:54]
• Best Strategy to Improve Developer Experience - [00:44:26]
• Internal Developer Platform & AI - [00:47:52]
• The Importance of Talking to the Developers - [00:51:40]
• 3 Tech Lead Wisdom - [00:54:18]

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Laura Tacho’s Bio
Laura Tacho is CTO at DX, a developer experience company. She’s a technology leader with a successful track record leading engineering and product development teams at companies like CloudBees, Aula Education, and Nova Credit. She’s been building developer tools and working on improving developer productivity for over 10 years, all the way from the heyday of IaaS and PaaS on cloud, through Docker and containers, CI/CD, and now as part of DX. She’s also an executive coach for engineering leaders and an expert in building world-class engineering organisations that consistently deliver outstanding results. Laura has coached CTOs and other engineering leaders from startups to the Fortune 500, and also facilitates a popular course on metrics and engineering team performance.

Follow Laura:

• Website – lauratacho.com
• LinkedIn – linkedin.com/in/lauratacho
• DX Core 4 – getdx.com/research/measuring-developer-productivity-with-the-dx-core-4
• Developer Productivity Metrics Course - lauratacho.com/developer-productivity-metrics-course

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