How American Express improved their developer experience

This is a recap from an interview with Michelle Swartz, VP of Developer Enablement at American Express, for the Engineering Enablement podcast. Listen to the full episode here.

Challenge

American Express, an organization not traditionally seen as a tech company, recognized the critical need to attract and retain top tech talent in an increasingly competitive landscape. This realization led to a journey focused on improving the developer experience to ensure their rapidly growing engineering organization would have modern tools, workflows, and processes such that they were enabled to do their best work.

The challenge was multifaceted. American Express needed to shift perceptions and position itself as a desirable workplace for software engineers. Additionally, they faced a growing backlog of developer requests and struggled to address the volume of issues efficiently. It became clear that a more strategic approach was necessary to truly elevate the developer experience.

Hypothesis

To address these challenges, American Express hypothesized that creating a dedicated Developer Experience team would be key to making the company an exceptional place for top software engineers to work. This team would develop a strategy focused on resolving issues developers face in their daily work. A core component of this strategy was the implementation of Paved Roads, which provided standardized tooling recommendations for developers. The DevEx team’s early projects also included improving the onboarding process since the company was hiring rapidly, as well as investing in improved documentation.

Metrics

American Express focused on several key metrics to track whether their developer experience was improving:

Developer experience surveys: Amex used periodic surveys to identify problems impacting developers. They examined the results by looking at sentiment across the company, as well as within segments (such as junior vs. more tenured engineers).
Developer NPS: Given that Amex wanted to become a place where top talent wanted to work, they paid attention to a Developer NPS score. This score comprised six questions, including how likely engineers were to recommend AmEx as a workplace and whether they found the ecosystem intuitive.
Time to Productivity: After deciding to focus on the onboarding process, Amex started capturing baseline measures to gauge ramp-up time, such as Time to 1st MR and Time to 10th MR.
Adoption: They also measure usage and adoption rates of their Paved Roads and their developer platforms.

Solution

So far, Amex has implemented several key solutions to address the challenges they were seeing:

They established a dedicated DevEx team with both platform and enablement focuses. This structure allowed the team to address both the technical infrastructure needs (platform) and the support and growth needs (enablement) of their engineers.
This team developed an onboarding bootcamp for new joiners to address the challenge of engineers understanding the ecosystem to write and deploy code.
They also created the “Amex Way Library” to improve knowledge management and documentation. The Amex Way Library includes: architecture and design, the organization’s culture, languages and patterns, and tooling and frameworks. This library serves as a centralized repository of information, making it easier for engineers to find the documentation they need without having to tap somebody on the shoulder.
The implementation of Paved Roads was a significant step towards standardization. The DevEx team examined the routine tasks that engineering teams had to do over and over again–for example, investigating how developers spin up their environments, or the common tooling based on their domains. The goal was to create a standardized path that allowed engineers to quickly set up environments and deploy code with all essential components, including security guardrails.
Guilds and communities of practice: To ensure buy-in and relevance of the Paved Roads, American Express established guilds and communities of practice. They enlisted the help of ~500 engineers to establish the principles for the Paved Roads.

Results

The results of these efforts have been encouraging so far:

The developer experience surveys indicated that a significant majority of engineers found their current projects engaging, with eight out of ten expressing this sentiment. Additionally, the developer network promoter score showed promising results, with many engineers satisfied with their tech skills’ advancement during their tenure at Amex.
The establishment of the “Amex Way Library” improved knowledge management, providing a central resource where engineers could find documentation and information. The successful community involvement was evident as engineers began referencing the library in internal communication channels to help each other, indicating that it had become a valuable and well-utilized resource.
By involving engineers through guilds and communities of practice in the decision-making process, Amex is fostering a more collaborative and inclusive culture. This approach helped ensure that the tools and practices developed were relevant and well-received by the engineering community, enhancing overall buy-in and support for these initiatives.
The onboarding bootcamp has been instrumental in helping new joiners quickly become productive and engaged members of the engineering team. It provided a structured and comprehensive introduction to Amex’s internal ecosystem and best practices, ensuring that engineers have the knowledge and tools they need from the start.

American Express recognizes that this journey is ongoing. They continue to refine their approach, adjusting based on engineer feedback and evolving needs. By maintaining this focus on developer experience and productivity, the company is positioning itself to attract and retain top tech talent by providing them with the tools and environment where they can do their best work.

Listen to AmEx’s full story here → Developer Experience at American Express