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DX Core 4 featured in ICONIQ Growth’s R&D Reporting Guide

Every year, ICONIQ Growth revisits their R&D Reporting Guide which covers the key metrics and frameworks for technology organizations to track and leverage. This year’s report prominently features the DX Core 4 framework as their recommended model for tracking developer productivity.

Engineering organizations are increasingly becoming a bigger line item for companies as well as key differentiator. However, the industry has previously lacked a standardized approach to reporting on engineering updates and how they tie into broader outcomes. ICONIQ’s R&D Reporting Guide address this by providing a blueprint for engineering leaders to prepare board updates, planning reports, and quarterly reviews.

“We believe [the DX Core 4] framework provides a focused set of metrics that work effectively at any sized organization and allows organizations to get immediate, actionable insights into productivity questions.”
ICONIQ Growth R&D Reporting Guide

ICONIQ Growth’s latest report recommends using the DX Core 4 framework for tracking developer productivity and for creating an Engineering Scorecard to include in board updates. The report states: “Over the past few years, we have seen different variations of frameworks like DORA, SPACE, and DevEx all with the aim of measuring engineering productivity. However, we found each framework to be missing critical components and wished that there was a comprehensive framework that combined business impact, development velocity, performance and reliability, and developer effectiveness… We believe [the DX Core 4] framework provides a focused set of metrics that work effectively at any sized organization and allows organizations to get immediate, actionable insights into productivity questions.”

Additionally, the Developer Experience Index (DXI), a proprietary measure from DX, was named a key R&D metric in the report. The report says: “The Developer Experience Index (DXI) offers a proven way to enhance productivity by focusing on removing friction for developers, enabling faster delivery and innovation. Unlike other measures, the DXI uniquely ties engineering effectiveness to business outcomes, assessing actionable areas of software delivery that impact development speed, ease, and quality.”

Engineering leaders can implement Core 4 by using DX or by instrumenting their own metrics. For more information about the DX Core 4 framework within DX, go here or request a demo. For more of ICONIQ’s recommendations on measuring productivity, read the full R&D Reporting Guide.