DPE Newsletter | The ASF goes all in with DPE

The ASF implements Develocity across all OSS projects | How DPE addresses the ‘dark costs’ of DevOps | What Microsoft learned from surveying 5000 engineers | Part 3 of a series on handling flaky tests | Netflix, Nasdaq, and GitLab discuss productivity initiatives | Apollo’s DPE Lowdown recording | Events, trainings, and jobs

INDUSTRY NEWS

Apache Software Foundation launches DPE initiative and standardizes on Develocity to deliver improved developer productivity & experience benefits 

The Apache Software Foundation (ASF) and Gradle Inc. announced recently that Gradle has entered into a collaboration with the Foundation as a Targeted Platinum Sponsor. This involves Gradle providing a free instance of Develocity (formerly Gradle Enterprise) that runs as a shared ASF infrastructure service available to all Apache projects and contributors. The goal is to scale DPE benefits like build and test performance acceleration and more efficient troubleshooting across the ASF community of 320 active open-source software projects.


Today there are over 30,000 builds running weekly that leverage Develocity on ASF projects like Beam, Kafka, Lucent, Pulsar, and Groovy, to name a few. The live instance running at the ASF can be accessed here. To learn more:

 

Read the blog

FEATURED UPCOMING EVENT

Nov-28: Developer Productivity Engineering – The Next Big Thing in Software Development

Over 75% of Develocity customers surveyed in a TechValidate study (including Spotify, Aetna, and VMWare) agree that DPE is “the next big thing” in the evolution of software development and delivery since the introduction of Agile and DevOps. DPE focuses on engineering solutions that address the toil, frustrations, and process bottlenecks that most negatively impact developer happiness and are not addressed by even the most mature DevOps practices. 

 

In this presentation, Baruch Sadogursky, lead technical evangelist at Gradle, explains how the practice of DPE addresses the dark costs of DevOps, including slow builds and tests, inefficient troubleshooting, and toolchain reliability issues that result from a general lack of observability into build performance trends and failure root causes. Join the webcast and learn how practicing DPE results in faster feedback cycles, more reliable and actionable data, and a highly satisfying developer experience across teams.

 

Save your seat

IDEAS & INSIGHT

Want the most productive developers money can buy? Microsoft's got the answer

In this interview with ZDNet following his presentation at DPE Forum NYC, Brian Houck, principal productivity engineer at Microsoft, shares his findings from over 5000 engineer responses to Microsoft's internal developer productivity survey.

 

The study revealed that keeping developers productive means reducing distractions and delays and maintaining a “flow state” to reduce cognitive fatigue. See what else Brian's team found best supports developer productivity at Microsoft.

 

Read more

BEST PRACTICES

3 key elements to incorporate into your flaky test remediation approach

Flaky tests are unpredictable and drain developer productivity on a daily basis at even the most elite software organizations. In the final part of Trisha Gee’s 3-part series on managing flaky tests, Gradle’s lead developer advocate provides expert guidance on how to remediate flaky tests. 

 

Learn more about Trisha’s multi-faceted strategy, which includes (1) deploying best practice strategies, (2) aligning your processes and resources, and (3) understanding the causes of flaky tests.

 

Read more

EXPERT TAKES

Netflix, NASDAQ, and GitLab weigh in on “How to Get Developer Productivity Engineering Right”

An eclectic group of presenters with a mutual passion for improving developer productivity shared their expertise at last month's DPE Forum New York City, which took place at the iconic Nasdaq MarketSite. DevOps.com covered the action and summarized some of the key lessons learned at Netflix, Nasdaq, GitLab, and Gradle:

  • Gradle - Hans Dockter, founder and CEO, alerts us to the dangers of developers facing cognitive fatigue due to long feedback cycles, frequent task-switching, and other distractions that take them out of the "flow state".

  • Netflix - Aubrey Chipman, senior software engineer, discusses the value of reducing feedback cycles for tests with Develocity Predictive Test Selection (PTS), saving upwards of 30,000 hours a year on tests alone.

  • Nasdaq - Amado Gramajo, VP, infrastructure and DevOps engineering, describes how Nasdaq is building a systematic approach to developer velocity with an internal developer platform service that delivers standardized tools and techniques across otherwise siloed teams.

  • GitLab - Lee Faus, global field CTO, explains how better tracking toolchain data helped them identify an issue with webhooks that was causing problems with testing, and shares recommendations for how to avoid this impediment to developer productivity

Read the article

DPE SUCCESS STORIES

Apollo Kotlin team shares DPE wins at most recent DPE Lowdown

If you missed the last episode of DevProdEng Lowdown, we chatted with Martin Bonnin, mobile engineer at Apollo, to get the lowdown on their DPE wins. Martin described how the Apollo Kotlin team leveraged Develocity to optimize their build and test speeds, resulting in a mean CI build-time decrease from ~28 to ~4 minutes (see their public dashboard ). Martin also described what next steps the team is taking in their journey toward DPE excellence. Specifically, this Lowdown covered:

  • What is the Apollo Kotlin project and how does it work with GraphQL?

  • How has using remote build cache impacted CI efficiency?

  • How does the team identify and debug cache misses with Build Validation scripts?

  • How did Apollo collaborate with Gradle and JetBrains to resolve build cacheability issues?

  • What have been some of the project’s most impactful developer productivity wins?

Watch the recording

UPCOMING EVENTS

Don't miss these upcoming learning opportunities

Visit our website for the complete schedule of upcoming training and industry events.

CAREER OPPORTUNITIES

DPE Job Openings

The industry needs you! You might find your dream role among these job openings related to DPE, developer productivity, and platform engineering. 

 

NOTE: These postings are active at the time of sending but are subject to change.