Introducing expanded benchmark segments

Benchmarking has always been a key part of the DX platform, and with our latest release, we’ve taken it a step further. The new expanded benchmarks segments provide even more granular insights, helping you and your team better contextualize your performance by tailoring benchmarks to similar industries, company sizes, and engineering roles.

Here’s a breakdown of what’s new and how you can start using it. You can also go explore some limited public data here.

Tailored to industry and company size

To ensure the most relevant comparisons, benchmarks are now divided into segments based on:

• Industry Sector: Distinct benchmarks for tech and non-tech companies.
• Company Size: Options for small to mid-sized (100-500 engineers), and large organizations (500+ engineers).
• Mobile engineers: Recognizing that mobile engineers often face different workflows and challenges, we’ve introduced specialized benchmarks just for mobile engineering teams, providing more accurate comparisons for these roles.

Percentile benchmarks for better insight

We’ve also included benchmarks for the P50, P75, and P90 performance levels. Here’s what these mean:

• P50: Median performance, reflecting the average.
• P75: Top quartile, a strong target for most teams.
• P90: Elite-level performance, representing the highest performers in the industry.

Customization for teams

To keep your organization aligned you can now set a default benchmark segment for your entire organization. This ensures consistency when different users access the platform. Individual users can also switch between different benchmarks when needed, to better reflect their specific team or role.

Why benchmarks are generally important

Benchmark Segments offer the context needed to make sense of your raw metrics. Instead of looking at cycle time or deployment frequency in isolation, you can now compare these metrics to others in similar industries or company sizes. This helps teams better understand where they stand by contextualizing data and making meaning out of it to know where to act and where there’s room for improvement.

Why tailored-specific benchmark segments are critical

By breaking down benchmarks into more specific segments, we’re not only providing a more meaningful comparison, but more relevant data for different teams. Nearly every organization wants to move fast, but “fast is relative to your competition.” For example, mobile engineers often experience different build times compared to other teams. With these new segments, teams can compare themselves against more appropriate benchmarks, ensuring more accurate reporting. This helps teams provide appropriate data with the right context to drive further investments, obtain the necessary buy-in from peers, and equip teams to make better decisions for their organization.

Flexibility for teams different types (i.e. mobile developers)

With the ability to set default benchmarks at the account level, your team will have a consistent view of performance metrics. For those who need it, the flexibility to switch between different benchmark segments is there, making the platform adaptable without losing consistency.

If you are an existing DX customer and would like to learn more about expanded benchmark segments, please contact your account representative today. To learn more about DX and our full suite of products, please request a demo through our website.

Frequently asked questions

• How many –and which companies– exist within my industry segment?
  • Each benchmark segment consists of at least 30,000 individuals and/or 200 companies . Our datasets include DX customers as well as research panel data collected as part of ongoing research.
• I don’t want to set a default benchmark for my team when we have a mix of mobile and non-mobile engineers, can I control these settings at the team level?
  • The default benchmark is set at the account level in order to create as much reporting consistency across the organization as possible. Currently, the default setting cannot be overridden in bulk for team level — users can only change their individual settings.
• I’ve been reporting on our benchmarks for some time now, will this change cause my scoring to swing heavily?
  • By default, the benchmarks you see in your reports are unchanged. This is because the “All companies” benchmark segment is the same data previously shown in DX. When new benchmark data is released in 2025, current 2024 benchmarks will still be available.
• Are companies that fall into our “tech” category - the “best” when it comes to performance and innovation?
  • No, not necessarily! Our data and research tells a nuanced story. For example, many non-tech companies have newer, greenfield codebases where developer productivity is high. And many fast-growing tech companies find themselves riddled in tech debt, at least in certain part of their organization. For more discussion on this, check out our recent webinar discussion here.
• Will more categories be added over time?
  • We plan to release more role-specific benchmark segments in the future. We would love to hear from you on what additional benchmarks would be most helpful.