“Picking metrics is the hardest part.” Wouldn’t it be great if that were true? The hardest part is everything around the metrics, and it’s those decisions that will determine whether your organisation is able to use metrics effectively – or if they’re actually going to cause your engineering culture to take a nosedive. In this talk, we’ll compare and contrast successful initiatives to improve developer experience and productivity with those that went nowhere – or worse, initiatives that left long-lasting damage on the team culture. Drawing on data from hundreds of engineering teams and leaders, you’ll learn about the key contributors to failed metrics initiatives, both cultural and technical. Whether it’s lack of transparency, undersupported engineering managers, or lack of budget for platform tooling, you’ll be able to identify signs in your own org that may be leading you on a path to nowhere. Consider this talk a “pre-mortem” for your own engineering metrics initiatives.
Laura Tacho is CTO at DX, a developer experience company. She previously led teams at companies like CloudBees, Codeship, Aula Education, and Nova Credit. She’s 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...