BetterUp improves quality by 30%, expands DevEx team

At BetterUp, developer productivity projects used to be a shared responsibility: all teams would take action to improve problems as they saw them, alongside their feature work. But as the company grew, this approach didn’t scale. There were some challenges that were causing friction for developers that required a more concerted effort.

Leslie Brown was a developer at BetterUp who found herself spending more and more time on developer experience work, in part because she felt a strong need to do so for her own work, but also because she was motivated by the idea of having a bigger impact. Eventually BetterUp’s CTO decided to form a dedicated DevEx team, and asked Brown if she’d take the lead. Brown recalls: “At first I wasn’t sure what it meant to be focused on DevEx, but then I read some online and learned that it’s all about removing friction from the engineer’s day to day. That resonated because it was something I was already doing, and definitely wanted to do more of.”

One of the first projects Brown inherited was the company’s annual engineering survey. This survey was being used to give a snapshot of the organization, which could be used to inform developer productivity projects as well. Brown soon learned, however, that this survey would require a lot of manual effort, including the time to understand what topics mattered to different teams, to collect data, and then analyze and deliver insights. “When we found DX, a product that does all that work for me and is built on a foundation of expertise, it was amazing,” says Brown.

Since implementing DX, Brown has been able to have an outsized impact by enabling her team to focus on the right projects and track the impact of their work, all without having to spend time collecting data about developer pain points. Now that BetterUp has used DX for over a year, Brown’s DevEx team has grown, and has successfully advocated for and led initiatives that have impacted the entire engineering organization.

Expanding the DevEx function at BetterUp

DX helped BetterUp’s DevEx function in three significant ways: by implementing a framework to improve productivity, improving engineering collaboration, and organizing DevEx as a business function.

Implementing a framework to improve engineering productivity

The BetterUp team had a backlog of issues impacting developers that had grown over the years as the organization expanded. They labeled each task simply “developer experience” or “developer productivity” without considering which aspect of the development process they related to.

When Brown took the helm of the company’s DevEx focus, she found that implementing DX provided a clear framework for understanding which factors are hindering developer productivity. With the insights and metrics within DX, as well as the ability to automate improvement efforts across the organization, BetterUp was able to establish a relationship between problems they were focused on and higher-level outcomes of this work.

Since implementing DX, engineering productivity at BetterUp has improved. Additionally, BetterUp’s quarterly planning has become more straightforward, with the engineering organization relying on insights from DX to inform upcoming objectives and provide solid justifications for each project.

Connecting teams to learn about best practices

DX heatmaps show the strengths and weaknesses of different engineering teams, and this has been widely adopted at BetterUp as a way to spread best practices. With these reports, engineering managers examine areas where teams experience challenges or demonstrate exceptional performance. For example, if one team is struggling with deep work, consulting the heatmap can reveal another team that excels in this area.

This paves the way for a discussion between the two managers, where they can exchange strategies. These conversations have led to practical changes. As a result of these exchanges and the follow-on improvements, BetterUp has seen significant improvements, such as 14% reduction in interruption frequency, 15% reduction in test flake rate, and a 30% improvement in quality (as measure by technical stability).

From a team of one to a successful business function

After implementing DX, BetterUp has completely transformed their ability to collect insights about engineering health, satisfaction, and productivity. Whereas they previously collected self-reported data using spreadsheets and run annually, they’re now able to automatically capture rich qualitative and quantitative insights and metrics that are organized and automatically translated into action items.

Previously, if Brown wanted to enable individual development teams to make their own improvements, she would have had to analyze results for each team, and partner with them to create action plans. Now, with DX, this is all automated: from delivering team-level results to providing strategies for improvement.

Ultimately, DX is now an embedded part of BetterUp’s DevEx function. It has helped them have an outsized impact, and drive a focus on developer experience at all levels of the organization. “I’m lucky to have had DX with me from the beginning,” Brown says.