What is the DXI? The guide to the Developer Experience Index

Software engineering now underpins nearly every aspect of business, making it crucial for leaders to measure and optimize productivity to achieve maximum financial impact.

The Developer Experience Index (DXI), built on over four million data points from 800 organizations, is a research-backed measurement that helps address common challenges in engineering systems and workflows while linking performance directly to the bottom line. By focusing on the entire developer experience, the DXI provides an accurate picture of how teams deliver value, revealing where to invest for the greatest return on your software efforts.

Below, we break down the DXI, its role in improving developer productivity, and how it helps organizations tackle code quality issues, refine their software development processes, and gain valuable insights to maintain a competitive edge.

Developer Experience Index overview

DXI definition

The developer experience index is a robust measure of key engineering performance drivers linked directly to financial impact. While many traditional metrics shed some light on developer productivity, DXI stands apart in its singular focus on validated outcomes that correlate to speed and ROI.

What the DXI measures

The Developer Experience Index (DXI) is a composite score derived from 14 standardized Likert-scale survey items. It evaluates 14 critical aspects of software development, such as code quality, focus time, and CI/CD processes.

The DXI score is a definitive measure of engineering effectiveness, offering clear insights into how efficiently developers deliver high-quality software.

A high DXI score compared to peers indicates productive, engaged developers and correlates with strong business outcomes, such as accelerated development cycles, reduced inefficiencies, and improved retention.

Developer experience driver examples

Key factors influence developers’ daily workflow, shaping the DXI. These drivers help developers work effectively and efficiently, minimize obstacles, and improve satisfaction. Here are some of the factors involved in calculating the DXI.

Ease of release

Ease of release involves reducing friction in deploying code to production or other environments. A typical example is automated CI/CD pipelines, which let developers deploy new features with a single command, ensuring faster and safer releases.

Cross-team collaboration

Cross-team collaboration facilitates seamless team dynamics between different groups to prevent silos, reduce cognitive load and drive better outcomes. For example, developers might work closely with product managers and designers in daily stand-ups to align on features, timelines, and expectations.

Build and test

Build and test processes are designed to be fast and reliable to streamline development. For example, a team might use parallelized testing to validate code changes quickly, significantly shortening the time required to merge updates.

Documentation

Documentation refers to creating and maintaining clear, up-to-date resources that support developers’ tasks. A great example is using a platform like Confluence to house high-quality documentation, making it easy for new hires or cross-functional teams to find the needed information.

Code review

Code review ensures that teams evaluate changes constructively and efficiently to maintain quality. To streamline the process and ensure consistent attention to critical aspects of the code, a team might implement a formalized code review process.

Why use the DXI?

The Developer Experience Index (DXI) was designed to provide executives, engineering managers, and developers with a precise measure of the health and effectiveness of their software engineering processes. It helps identify inefficiencies, enabling teams to streamline workflows, improve quality, and increase return on investment.

The DXI is based on comprehensive research across top engineering orgs

The DXI results from rigorous research, leveraging over four million data samples from more than 800 organizations worldwide, including leading tech companies like Dropbox, Twilio, and Toast and global enterprises such as Pfizer, Procter & Gamble, and Tesco. Its foundation lies in extensive analyses—from cognitive interviews and descriptive statistics to predictive modeling and regression analyses—conducted with over 40,000 developers. This robust methodology ensures the DXI is both reliable and actionable.

It’s more comprehensive than traditional metrics

Unlike metrics like lead time or mean time to restore, the DXI offers a broader, more actionable perspective on engineering effectiveness. It measures 14 dimensions, including deep work, local iteration speed, and release process. Each dimension is designed to be both actionable at the managerial level and predict outcomes like engineering speed, quality, and efficiency.

The DXI directly correlates with engineering ROI

Notably, the DXI is the first validated measure that links developer productivity directly to financial outcomes. A single-point increase in the DXI score correlates with a 0.7% improvement in engineering efficiency through reduced time loss, demonstrating tangible ROI. Top-quartile DXI scores are associated with engineering teams achieving development speed and quality four to five times greater than bottom-quartile teams. These high-scoring teams also exhibit 43% higher employee engagement, underscoring the index’s role in fostering a positive and productive engineering culture.

The DXI can be broadly adopted and translated into action

The DXI has been successfully adopted across industries. It provides leaders with actionable insights to identify improvement opportunities, benchmark against peers, and measure the impact of their initiatives. Its predictive capabilities make it a critical tool for organizations striving to optimize their engineering investments, achieve efficient growth, and align their software development processes with broader business objectives.

Understanding and applying the DXI

The Developer Experience Index evaluates essential aspects of developer workflows, clearly showing where teams excel and where processes falter. By using DXI as a quantitative metric to identify these challenges, organizations can make targeted improvements that result in faster workflows and more reliable outcomes.

Insights that benefit every level of the organization

DXI delivers actionable insights tailored to the needs of executives, managers, and developers.

Executives can see how developer productivity affects financial outcomes, including cost reductions and quicker market delivery. Understanding this connection allows for strategic decision-making that aligns with the organization’s priorities. For instance, better DXI scores indicate lower infrastructure costs resulting from more efficient builds.
Managers can identify operational inefficiencies, such as underperforming pipelines or poorly managed work environments, and allocate resources where they will have the most significant impact.
Developers will benefit from tangible improvements to their daily work. Faster build times, fewer interruptions, and better tooling enhance productivity and job satisfaction.

Demonstrating the financial impact of developer experience improvements

DXI links developer productivity to measurable financial benefits, enabling technical and business leaders to justify their investments in developer experience.

Efficiency gains lead to cost savings. Research shows that a one-point increase in DXI correlates with a 0.7% boost in productivity. High-performing teams with strong DXI scores deliver software up to five times faster than low-performing teams, reducing operational and labor costs.
Revenue growth can accelerate when delivery timelines decrease. For instance, if a technology company prioritizes developer experience and reduces its development cycle time from 12 weeks to 6 weeks, this change could allow it to generate additional revenue by entering the market sooner.
Higher employee engagement leads to long-term retention and continuity. Teams with strong DXI scores report 43% higher engagement, reducing turnover costs and maintaining institutional knowledge.

Linking technical metrics to business success

DXI is more than just a productivity measure—it is a strategic tool for aligning technical improvements with business objectives.

DXI demonstrates how developer experience investments translate into efficiency gains, cost savings, and employee satisfaction. It provides a framework for engineering leaders to make data-driven decisions. For organizations aiming to remain competitive, optimizing for DXI is a practical step toward making DevEx investments a strategic business decision.

How the DXI fits into measuring developer productivity

The DXI is one of the four essential metrics for understanding an organization’s performance at a high level. It reflects developer productivity across four dimensions—speed, effectiveness, quality, and impact—with the DXI as the cornerstone for measuring effectiveness.

What makes the DXI unique is its dual purpose: it offers a clear view of how well an organization delivers and acts as a leading indicator for the other dimensions. Improving the DXI also drives improvements in speed, quality, and impact.

As an index of 14 developer experience drivers, the DXI also provides a diagnostic tool for leaders. It highlights the areas hindering team performance, which leaders can use to make informed decisions about where to invest for meaningful, targeted improvements.

How to start measuring the DXI

The Developer Experience Index (DXI) is a proprietary metric created by DX to assess and improve developer experience (DevEx) while connecting enhancements to financial results. It is available as a standard feature when your organization adopts DevEx Cloud. You can develop your DevEx metrics by conducting developer surveys even if you are not a DX customer.

Build vs buy: DX’s DXI vs. custom DevEx metrics

Building custom DevEx metrics or adopting DX’s DXI depends on your organization’s needs and resources. Building custom metrics offers flexibility, allowing you to tailor the evaluation to your unique developer workflows and priorities.

Creating a reliable framework requires significant time, expertise, and effort, including survey design, data validation, and ongoing maintenance. Even then, it may still not achieve the participation necessary for reliability. It will also lack the benchmarking capability to compare performance against peers.

Adopting DX’s DXI provides an out-of-the-box solution grounded in data from over 40,000 developers and 4 million benchmark samples. It eliminates the guesswork with a proven methodology, offering insights validated through rigorous testing. While it involves a subscription cost, DXI delivers actionable insights and ROI-driven evidence to help justify investments, making it a scalable choice for organizations seeking immediate and reliable results.

What you get with your DXI

The DXI is more than just a number; it serves as a framework for identifying, prioritizing, and implementing improvements that enhance developer productivity and drive business impact. Here’s what the DXI provides to help you take meaningful action.

A clear understanding of your organization’s challenges

Your DXI score reveals where friction exists in your development processes. It highlights actionable areas that might hold your teams back, like slow iteration speeds, unclear requirements, or inefficient release processes. The breakdown of 14 dimensions provides a detailed view of strengths and weaknesses, making it clear where to focus your efforts.

Transparent reporting

DXI results help align your organization by ensuring everyone—executives, managers, and developers—understands the current state. Reporting tailored to each audience fosters transparency and collaboration:

Executives can link developer experience to business outcomes.
Managers gain insights into team-specific challenges.
Developers see how their work contributes to broader objectives.

With this alignment, everyone works toward the same goals.

Recommendations for tactical improvements

The DXI provides detailed insights into specific areas of improvement by analyzing data at the team level and breaking it down by role, seniority, or other factors. This granularity ensures your efforts are targeted and impactful.

For example, one team might struggle with technical debt while another faces delays due to slow iteration speeds. Senior developers might encounter challenges like unclear architecture, while junior developers may need better onboarding or clearer expectations.

These tailored insights allow you to address the root causes of friction, ensuring solutions align with each group’s unique needs and driving meaningful improvements across the organization.

Industry benchmarks

Your DXI score provides access to unique benchmarks based on millions of data points. Comparing your results to those of your industry peers provides valuable context, helping you understand your engineering culture and identify areas where you can gain a competitive edge.

A roadmap for actionable change

DXI insights translate into a clear plan for improvement. Whether the focus is streamlining workflows, deploying better tools, or adopting best practices, your DXI score guides you toward the most impactful changes. Key actions might include:

Process optimization, like reducing bottlenecks in code reviews or build times
Tooling improvements, such as introducing automation tools to minimize manual work
Best practice sharing and learning from high-performing software development teams within your organization or industry

Integration with broader metrics

DXI seamlessly integrates with the DORA and SPACE frameworks, offering a comprehensive view of engineering health. This integration helps you connect improvements in developer experience with broader organizational goals, such as reducing change lead time, increasing deployment frequency, lowering failure rates, and tracking progress over time using quantitative and qualitative metrics.

Measurable impact on your business

Improving your DXI score goes beyond boosting developer satisfaction—it drives tangible business outcomes. Reducing inefficiencies by addressing friction points saves time and costs. Streamlining accelerates the software delivery process, enabling faster time to market. Freeing developers from tech debt allows them to focus on innovation and creating new features that add value.

By understanding and leveraging your DXI, you create a developer environment where teams are more engaged, processes are more efficient, and the business sees measurable ROI. The DXI equips you with the insights and tools to turn data into meaningful, lasting change.