DevEx, DORA, Effective 1:1s & Boring Strategy Docs
Newsletter - Issue #13
🙏 Points of inspiration for a perfect summer ⤵️
🎙️Team Efficiency & Developer Experience
Watch the exclusive podcast, dedicated to all things DORA and beyond! In this episode, Ben Parisot, Engineering Manager at Planet Argon, speaks in detail with our host, Kovid Batra, about how to effectively gauge team satisfaction and developer experience. They discussed measuring code quality, collaboration, and roadmap contribution as factors driving efficiency. Get to the full podcast to identify key areas of engineering efficiency to focus on, and tackle common metrics implementation challenges.
Article of the Week ⭐
“We have found a valid, reliable way to measure software delivery performance that satisfies the requirements we laid out. It focuses on global, system-level goals, and measures outcomes that dif- ferent functions must collaborate in order to improve.”
– Forsgren, Humble, and Kim, Accelerate
🙈 How to Misuse & Abuse DORA Metrics
Software businesses are complex. It’s tempting to simplify it down to a few simple rules and metrics. But oversimplification merely incentivises for the ignored essential complexities to emerge in new and unexpected ways. Every time patterns emerge, naïve followers may apply solutions to those patterns in inappropriate context. We call these anti-patterns.
Bryan Finster is a Continuous Delivery expert who started the Minimum CD movement.
His paper highlights the common anti-patterns he observed in engineering organisations that emerged as a consequence of success and stability the DORA Metrics brought to the industry.
DORA Metric Anti-patterns
Focusing on Speed. It’s not about speed of movement from one column to another. Instead, the benefit is from creating features and rolling them out in lock-step without any waste or inventory in between.
Moving the Goalpost. The intent of continuous delivery is small batches of changes being rolled out in equally sized releases. More code than releases? Not integrating enough. More releases than code? Releases are not stable.
Goal Setting. “Here are your DORA metric OKRs for the quarter.” Ouch. Zoom out, OKRs should capture what business outcomes improve as a result of shifting activities that we monitor through the metrics.
Chasing Transformation. Continuous learning is continuous. Transformations are discrete and finite. DORA metrics help you monitor certain areas that you may be fixing temporarily, but the overall qualities are forever-changing.
Vanity Metrics. Sexy dashboards usually promote behaviors of comparing teams with each other or using global reports to chase some idea of “elite performers”. Your intent should be to check whether the numbers are improving at the intended rate, not what they show as a snapshot.
Back to Reality
Bryan recommends the following actions to promote moving teams back on track to focusing on the important aspects of engineering teams.
Remove Constraints: DORA metrics should be used to identify and remove constraints in the delivery process rather than as direct goals.
Focus on Quality: Metrics should guide improvements in delivery quality, sustainability, and overall business outcomes.
Look for Movement: Highlight deltas of movement and trends, rather than records and targets.
Radiate Team Information: The team level metrics are the common denominator across all departments. Want to measure bottlenecks in product planning? Combine with metrics gathered from the operating and executing teams.
Bonus tip: Build Quality Guardrails
Moving smoothly in small steps will give the illusion of speed. But the fragmentation will make it more difficult to back-track defects and issues. That’s why DORA asked respondents to measure failure rates with each change concurrently with the other metrics.
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Interested? Register using the link 👇
Other highlights 👇
🤝 How to Make Your 1:1s the Most Efficient Tool in Your Toolbox
One-on-one’s can be daunting. Especially if you’ve never been trained or coached on an approach that produces results. The default for most people is to “report” on their weekly activities. What a waste!
1:1 are NOT for status updates. Such matters should be handled in other meetings like daily stand-ups or sprint checkups.
Proper Use of 1:1 Meetings
Focus on Wellbeing and Alignment: Discussions should centre on the person, rather than the embodiment of a “role”. Address the "why" behind their actions and the "what" in terms of support they need.
Safe Space: Ensure confidentiality to build trust. Exceptions are action items like raises or policy changes.
Downward Feedback: If you’re a manager, let your counterpart know what’s going on at your level and give them the full picture.
Upward Feedback: Encourage your counterpart to share their thoughts on the company, team structure, and management. Especially in areas where they need you to address something. Addressing your team’s concerns after they raise it is the fastest way to build trust with them.
💰 Making Engineering Strategies More Readable
Your strategy documents are boring! Sorry
Start With the Recommendations
Policy: what does the strategy require or allow?
Operation: how is the strategy enforced and carried out, how do I get exceptions for the policy?
Refine: what were the load-bearing details that informed the strategy?
Diagnose: what are the more generalized trends and observations that steered the thinking?
Explore: what is the high-level, wide-ranging context that we brought into creating this strategy?
You can see where author Will Larson is going with this. Executed well, combined with good storytelling, a bit of editorial help and constant feedback from your peers, your boring documents are a matter of the past. Below are the issues to avoid and why this matters.
Key Issues with Traditional Writing
Too Long, Didn’t Read (TL;DR): Readers seeking quick answers might give up before reaching the key policy recommendations.
Approval Meeting Inefficiencies: Early questions about research and options can derail approval meetings if the policy is not presented upfront.
Transient Alignment: Separate strategy documents for thinking and policy can cause misunderstandings over time, especially with new team members.
Who asked?
Context can be boring. But it is also necessary. However, only to those to those readers that find the document relevant. You may recognize this structure as the McKinsey Pyramid: Start with the answer, expand on the supportive arguments, and explore the context for those who are still reading.
Meta-comment: This is Denis from the Editorial team. I have to admit I had to work past my own hypocrisy and structure this byte according to the article as I started off in the boring order. Oops! You live, you learn!
That’s it for Today!
Whether you're hustling with your side projects, catching up with the latest technologies, or simply relaxing & recharging, wish you all a lovely day ahead.
See you next week, Ciao 👋
Credits 🙏
Curators - Diligently curated by our community members Denis & Kovid
Writers of the week -
, Ido Shveki, Will LarsonSponsors - This newsletter is sponsored by Typo AI - Ship reliable software faster.
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