InfoQ Dev Summit Boston: Increasing Developer Productivity – Intentional Platform Evolution

At InfoQ Dev Summit in Boston, Jennifer Davis, Engineering Manager at Google and author of “Effective DevOps” and “Modern System Administration,” discussed strategies for increasing developer productivity through purposeful platform evolution. She emphasized the importance of effective documentation and code samples in fostering a thriving developer community.

Every day, teams are coming up with new ways to optimize their processes using the tools and technologies they have. And then a platform comes along. These platforms can adapt to the needs of the team. But at some point, you have to scale. And that’s when the real questions start: How should the team handle this? Making it easier for developers is hard, and you know what? Not everything can be automated. -Jennifer Davis

Davis began her presentation by debunking common misconceptions about what constitutes developer productivity. “In the first part I want to talk about developer productivity, what is it? It’s entirely about lines of code. And the number of artifacts created is the entry into this flow, right? Is that so? No, not at all,” she joked. Instead, she argued that it was more complex; involves streamlining processes to build value faster while focusing on team performance rather than individual achievement.

She also emphasized the importance of including developer experiences in platform design. According to Davis, these experiences are driven by capabilities such as ease of writing and maintaining code, speed of feedback loops, and autonomy in approaching problem-solving. She then spoke about the challenges she faced in her role at Google due to disruptions in workflows resulting from rapid development. As Davis describes it, the developer relationship involves supporting developer interests, providing hands-on support by writing sample code, and troubleshooting coding issues.

To solve this problem, Davis explained his approach: They started thinking about what we were actually trying to do to increase value for their users. This led them to establish policies aimed at minimizing unnecessary workload while maximizing learning from past mistakes.

One of the achievements of the Developer Relations team is code samples, such as the PubSub sample quick start guide, which can be found below:

func main() {
	ctx := context.Background()

	// Sets your Google Cloud Platform project ID.
	projectID := "YOUR_PROJECT_ID"

	// Creates a client.
	client, err := pubsub.NewClient(ctx, projectID)
	if err != nil {
		log.Fatalf("Failed to create client: %v", err)
	}
	defer client.Close()

	// Sets the id for the new topic.
	topicID := "my-topic"

	// Creates the new topic.
	topic, err := client.CreateTopic(ctx, topicID)
	if err != nil {
		log.Fatalf("Failed to create topic: %v", err)
	}

	fmt.Printf("Topic %v created.\n", topic)
}

One of the main ideas she touched on was friction logging – documenting the difficulties encountered when using software – which helps identify areas for improvement both internally for colleagues and externally for customers. Davis also emphasized that culture and supporting a positive environment where team members feel safe to share their thoughts and ideas is crucial to high performance. Finally, she emphasized the importance of establishing an active communication plan that combines effort with value, celebrating victories while constantly challenging assumptions.

Developers interested in learning more about the InfoQ Dev Summit series can visit the website and stay tuned to InfoQ for a recording of the talk in the coming months. Some examples of Davis’ work can be found on Google Cloud Samples or on Github.