Engineering Enablement by Abi Noda

This week we’re joined by Jason Kennedy, Senior Engineering Manager of Developer Experience at One Medical. Jason’s team takes a uniquely customer-driven approach to improving the developer experience, and in this episode he describes their philosophy and how it works in practice. Jason explains how they shadow developers, how they run surveys, and more.

Discussion points:
  • (1:02) Renaming from Engineering Efficiency to Engineering Experience
  • (4:17) How Platform and DevEx teams differ 
  • (5:38) How One Medical’s approach to customer experience inspires this team’s work
  • (7:01) Mapping out the developer journey
  • (11:14) Jason’s career transition from VPE to a line manager role
  • (14:14) Challenges some companies face with getting buy-in for a DevEx team
  • (16:22) Taking a customer service approach to DevEx
  • (19:12) Jason’s experience with DORA metrics
  • (22:19) Lessons learned about ownership
  • (24:18) The “Gemba” practice used at One Medical 
  • (28:02) How information from the Gemba practice is stored
  • (30:59) Using weekly polls to surface pain points
  • (34:03) Tracking trends in the poll
  • (35:00) Using a quarterly NPS survey for overall sentiment
  • (37:08) How sentiment is measured and evaluated
  • (41:44) The biggest challenges with surveys 

Mentions and links:
Follow Jason on LinkedIn
Listen to the podcast episode with Jasmine James
Book about Disney: Be Our Guest


Creators & Guests

Host
Abi Noda
Abi is the founder and CEO of DX (getdx.com), which helps engineering leaders measure and improve developer experience. Abi formerly founded Pull Panda, which was acquired by GitHub.

What is Engineering Enablement by Abi Noda?

This is a weekly podcast focused on developer productivity and the teams and leaders dedicated to improving it. Topics include in-depth interviews with Platform and DevEx teams, as well as the latest research and approaches on measuring developer productivity. The EE podcast is hosted by Abi Noda, the founder and CEO of DX (getdx.com) and published researcher focused on developing measurement methods to help organizations improve developer experience and productivity.