How DoorDash reduced cognitive load with a developer portal

This is a recap from an interview with Adam Rogal, who leads Developer Productivity and Platform at DoorDash, for the Engineering Enablement podcast. Listen to the full episode here.

The challenge at DoorDash

When Adam Rogal, Director of Engineering, joined DoorDash, one of the primary challenges the engineering organization faced was the lack of clarity around service ownership and the scattered nature of developer tools across the organization. Engineers struggled to identify who was responsible for different services, leading to delays and confusion. At the same time, essential tools for development were spread across various locations—ranging from command-line interfaces to Slack bots—creating inefficiencies and slowing down workflows.

This disorganization became a critical issue as DoorDash’s engineering organization scaled. Without a central hub, engineers constantly had to switch between multiple systems, reducing productivity. The absence of a unified platform made it difficult for engineers to focus on development, as they spent considerable time navigating different tools and figuring out ownership. It became clear that a centralized developer portal was necessary to streamline processes and support the company’s rapid growth.

Hypothesis

The team believed that creating a centralized developer portal would reduce friction for engineers by consolidating all necessary resources—like debugging tools, quality metrics, and service ownership information—into a single platform. This would eliminate the need for engineers to jump between multiple systems, streamline workflows, and allow them to focus more on actual development tasks.

They also hypothesized that the portal would encourage collaboration across teams. By making it easier for engineers to contribute to shared tools and resources within a community-driven platform, they anticipated quicker value delivery and broader adoption throughout the engineering teams.

Metrics

To track the effectiveness of the developer portal and identify areas for improvement, DoorDash focused on several key metrics:

Daily active users: The team monitored how many engineers were using the portal daily to ensure regular engagement with the platform and integration into their workflows.
Feature usage: They observed how often engineers used tools like Test Studio and the quality dashboard to assess whether these features were solving critical problems such as automating tests and tracking service health.
Contributions from other teams: One key indicator of success was the number of plugins and features contributed by other teams. As the portal was designed to be collaborative, increased contributions signaled that engineers saw value in expanding its functionality.
Onboarding and training: Codelabs, used to onboard new engineers, were tracked for engagement. High usage showed that new hires quickly adapted to the platform, incorporating it into their daily work from day one.

Solution

The solution they landed on was a centralized platform called DevConsole, designed to serve as a home for all engineering tools and resources at DoorDash. These solutions were designed to streamline workflows and improve overall productivity for engineers:

Test Studio: A tool introduced early on, Test Studio allows engineers to automate and visualize testing, speeding up the testing process and reducing manual effort.
Quality dashboard: This feature centralizes important metrics related to service health, making it easier for engineers and leaders to monitor outages and performance, linking technical issues to potential business impacts like delivery loss.
Service ownership identification: DevConsole provides clear visibility into who owns which services, solving the issue of ownership confusion and improving accountability.
Codelabs for onboarding: Codelabs offer step-by-step guidance to help new engineers quickly learn how to use the platform, ensuring a smoother onboarding process.
Debugging tools: The portal includes debuggers that assist engineers in troubleshooting and resolving issues in real-time, reducing time spent on manual problem-solving and improving operational efficiency.

Rollout

The initial rollout of DevConsole began during a hackathon, where Adam Rogal and his team built the first version featuring Test Studio and the quality dashboard. After winning the hackathon, they capitalized on the momentum and gradually expanded the portal, introducing more tools that met the immediate needs of engineers.

As more teams adopted DevConsole, it transitioned into a community-driven platform. Over time, new plugins were added, such as debuggers and developer velocity tracking tools, addressing broader needs within the engineering organization. Codelabs were also introduced to streamline the onboarding process for new engineers. As adoption continued to grow, DevConsole became a central part of DoorDash’s engineering workflow, with continuous improvements driven by feedback from the engineers who used it.

Listen to the full story here → Bootstrapping a developer portal