1-800 Contacts augments DORA metrics with DX

1-800 Contacts is the leader in direct-to-consumer contact lenses, serving over 20 million customers. Its digital systems are the backbone of the business supporting thousands of customer interactions every hour. For engineering leadership, this means supporting a team of over 100 developers to build reliable systems and continuously improve how they work.

For the past several years, 1-800 Contacts used DORA metrics to measure engineering performance. While DORA metrics were helpful in identifying high-level trends, they didn’t reveal the sources of developer friction. “With DORA you can see the data at a high level, but you don’t know what’s driving the trends or what’s most important to fix. DX enhances the DORA metrics by surfacing root causes” said Josh Moore, Director of Engineering.

“With DORA you can see the data at a high level, but you don’t know what’s driving the trends or what’s most important to fix. DX enhances the DORA metrics by surfacing root causes.”

Josh Moore, Director of Engineering, 1-800 Contacts

1-800 Contacts adopted DX to help them get to the “why” behind DORA metrics—in other words, connecting delivery metrics with developer experience and identifying the issues that mattered most to their engineers. DX has given 1-800 Contacts visibility into the challenges developers face—quantifying pain points like CI/CD delays and codebase challenges that were previously hard to articulate.

DX gives leaders high-level insights to guide strategy, while teams receive reports tailored to their specific context. Moore shares, “Now that product managers and directors have visibility into these areas, they’ve started asking questions like, ‘what are we doing about this?’. That visibility we absolutely did not have before.”

“Now that product managers and directors have visibility into these areas, they’ve started asking questions like, ‘what are we doing about this?’ That visibility we absolutely did not have before.”

Josh Moore, Director of Engineering, 1-800 Contacts

The impact of DX has been significant. Thanks to data provided by DX, engineering leaders have tackled previously “untouchable” issues like technical debt and CI/CD friction. “DX helps us iterate on things every quarter. We’re constantly revisiting and challenging assumptions as a result” said Moore.

In addition to productivity gains achieved through these efforts, 1-800 Contacts also reduced regrettable attrition by 63%, amounting to $1.3M saved. By prioritizing developer experience with DX, 1-800 Contacts has built a thriving engineering culture where developers feel energized by their work and the business sustains its edge as a leader in vision care.

For more on 1-800 Contact’s developer productivity journey, check out our customer video:

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