§ 1 Balanced Scales

Context

Software development includes cognitively-intensive tasks, and developers ought to be in their best form to be efficient and effective at work. DX takes these and other factors into consideration, and a good DX is personal and requires fine-tuning.

Problem

Despite being able to intuitively perceive factors that act as beneficial or detrimental to their DX, developers are often unaware of how they can improve it, either on their own or with help from other people in their organisation.

How can we improve our DX?

Forces

• A developer’s mental state is affected by myriad factors in their workplace experience, and they need clarity about which ones truly matter most to make sense of their work.
• Some factors, such as tools and teamwork, are visible and easily recognisable, but less visible ones, such as motivation and psychological safety, often shape experience in a foundational way.
• A developer’s experience is personal and subjective, but it is also bound to the shared realities and demands of the organisation.

Solution

Assess the impact of each one of the dimensions of the mind: cognitive, affective, and conative. Considering the limitations in place, regularly assess the importance of each dimension relative to the other ones and focus on improving the most important ones, continuously.

To better guide developers in the improvement of their current DX, its three different dimensions must be considered, as each has its own intricacies and details.

The cognitive dimension deals with the way developers perceive the infrastructure in use. A developer’s infrastructure is not restricted to the software (and hardware) tools in use, including also the techniques and practices they employ while using them or collaborating with their co-workers, and their skill level (§2 Infrastructure Alignment).

The affective dimension is related to how developers feel about their work, taking social, team, and belonging factors into account, among others (§3 Good Feelings).

The conative dimension has to do with how developers see the value of their work. It takes factors such as motivation, commitment and goal-setting into consideration(§4 Well-Valued Contribution).

The weight of each dimension will vary from person to person, as each developer has different needs and can tolerate different things at varying levels. Each situation may differ in terms of environments and people involved. Finding the level of influence each of them has on the situation will require some introspection.

Examples

• Alice noticed she is feeling increasingly frustrated at work. While her tools are fine, she is not being supported by the people around her. By reflecting on the cognitive, affective, and conative dimensions, she realises that the affective side (related to her feelings about work) has a larger weight than she had previously thought. Following Good Feelings, which advises developers to have a positive social environment, including good teamwork, respect, trust, and positive relationships, she starts a conversation with her team lead about her needs and, through receiving support from her team members, her overall experience is improved.
• Bob and Charlie are part of a new team relating to a project their company was contracted to do, and decide to start a debate within the team about the biggest challenges they foresee encountering. The tools imposed on them by the project are not the best, and will probably be their biggest hurdle to overcome. While they cannot change the tools, they recognise that the way setting high-quality goals and staying motivated can have a positive effect, offsetting the detriments of the tools. They set out to implement Well-Valued Contribution, a pattern that encourages developers to have well-defined goals, find motivation, and be aligned with each other, to identify how they can ensure their DX is positive.
• David, a project manager, notices that Ellie, a developer who is a newcomer to the project, is struggling despite being high-performant in her previous project. In a one-on-one, they go over the three DX dimensions and realise that, while she gets along with her colleagues and is confident in the value her work brings to the project, she is having a hard time adjusting to the new tools and processes. David introduces more self-learning time into the weekly schedule, and Ellie’s DX improves through dedicated time to honing her skills for the project.

Consequences

• Assessing their DX enables a developer to know more about themself, and to better understand the factors that impact their day-to-day work life the most.
• A developer can take action to ensure they have a better DX through being aware of the factors that have a larger impact to them.
• Some factors, like the organisational culture or the current project’s goals, lie outside of a developer’s sphere of influence and, as such, they cannot be improved directly by them.
• Identifying what impacts a developer most requires the developer to take some time to reflect on their daily life. Depending on their workload, a developer may be hard-pressed to perform this introspection and experiment with the different factors in play.