Internal developer portals (IDPs) have become essential for any company that wants to increase productivity, performance and, most importantly, the satisfaction of its developers. But how do you know if your IDP is achieving these goals? By measuring it, for example by conducting a developer survey.
In my previous article in this two-part series, I described how to design a developer survey to find out what your team wants from an IDP. In this article, I’ll show you some ways you can put your findings into action.
At Port’s recent Portal Talks event, DX CEO Abi Noda outlined three steps to using survey data for action:
I’ll break down these and some other steps below.
The most important thing about a survey is to use it to make effective change.
For example, one of our customers used the following format:
AppSec provides instant visibility into the security posture of each app, while Cloud Cost combines cost data, links resources to costs, and provides dashboards for visibility and further analysis.
With this insight you can set priorities.
The example above is clear because it is about actual vulnerabilities and features. However, some questions are more difficult to analyze to determine appropriate actions to address these issues. Examples could be: “How productive do you feel?” or “Do you have enough time to focus on development?”
In these cases, you can use benchmarks—from past surveys you’ve conducted, company-wide employee satisfaction surveys, or comparisons with other companies in your industry—to identify any noticeable changes and try to determine their root cause.
Some results require a more in-depth discussion. For example, if the survey consistently returns poor results, you may want to dig deeper into the developers’ problems by having an open team conversation or one-on-one meetings. This will help you figure out where the real problems lie.
Regardless, managers should schedule meetings with their team to discuss the results and create an action plan to resolve the issues.
A few questions can help you set clear priorities. But don’t try to do everything at once. Instead, focus on changing important tasks one at a time and act on the feedback you receive.
One of the hardest parts of surveys is maintaining engagement (or giving people a reason to engage). It’s important to say “thank you” to respondents and provide feedback. This can even be as vague as “the survey will help us track and improve the developer experience.” The more open you are, the more engagement you’re likely to get, so being able to provide some details about the actions you’ll take based on the survey results will help make the team feel valued and engaged.
Developer experience surveys are just one factor in evaluating developers. Combine survey results with other metrics like developer productivity metrics, employee satisfaction surveys, real-time feedback (while developers are using the portal), and team conversations. You’ll get a clearer picture of what’s really going on and be able to build a business case for new features, updates, or changes.
If you made changes based on the results of a survey, you need to know what impact those changes had on developers. Are they happy with the new feature or process? Did it change things for the better?
It can be helpful to ask questions quickly after a developer uses a new feature, DX’s Noda explained, so they get immediate feedback and don’t have a hard time recalling the experience.
This may look like a series of questions:
Developer experience surveys can serve as a feedback loop for your internal developer portal and allow you to get the most value from your team. They can also influence how your developers feel about their work, reduce their friction points, and increase their productivity.
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