A platform team's guide to DX

As a Platform Engineering or Developer Experience (DevEx) team, your mission is to deliver improvements that enhance developer productivity and reduce friction. You own the tools, processes, and systems that empower developers to build, test, and deploy with speed and confidence.

DX amplifies your impact by helping you:

• Pinpoint key opportunities to shape your roadmap
• Gather actionable, developer-focused feedback
• Quantify the business value of a seamless developer experience

There are three core capabilities in DX which are designed for Platform teams: Snapshots, Studies, and PlatformX. In this article, we’ll walk through each of these features and how to leverage them.

DX Snapshots

DX Snapshots offer platform teams a high-level view of developer experience through quarterly surveys. These surveys provide actionable data that helps you make informed, impactful decisions. With Snapshots, you can:

• Shape your roadmap by identifying opportunities and justifying investments with confidence.
• Track CSAT as your North Star metric, providing a clear lens into how developers perceive your platform.
  • Collect actionable feedback alongside scores to uncover deeper insights into developer needs.
• Access and analyze data with flexible tools, like DX’s built-in reports or custom analyses via Data Studio and your DX data lake.

Snapshots turn data into decisions, giving you clarity to prioritize efforts that deliver the greatest impact.

Studies

Snapshots help you see trends, but DX Studies allow you to uncover the why behind them. By collecting targeted feedback from specific audiences, Studies help you solve nuanced problems with precision.

Use Studies to:

• Focus on targeted audiences to collect detailed feedback. For example:
  • Survey developers who marked themselves as “dissatisfied” to understand their pain points and how to address them.
  • Survey newly onboarded iOS developers, asking questions about their experience with testing.
• Tailor your questions to uncover actionable insights and solve specific problems.

With Studies, you gain the precision to address challenges head-on and make targeted improvements where they matter most.

PlatformX

While Snapshots and Studies provide periodic feedback, PlatformX lets you gather insights and make adjustments as they happen. This real-time capability ensures you stay ahead of potential issues and continually enhance the developer experience.

With PlatformX, you can:

• Understand usage patterns to see who’s using your tools and how they engage with them.
• Collect timely feedback to improve experiences as tools are being used. For instance:
  • Ask for feedback right after a developer scaffolds a new Backstage template.
  • Survey developers after they install a CLI tool for the first time.
• You can access reports in DX, or use Data Studio to perform custom analyses using your DX data lake.

PlatformX enables you to act in the moment, turning real-time insights into real-time improvements that keep developers productive and satisfied.

If you’re already using DX and want to explore how Platform and DevEx teams are driving measurable impact with our tools, reach out to your account representative. To learn more about DX and our full suite of products, please request a demo through our website.