“How pointless to try to improve something as complex as the developer toolchain without first being able to observe it.”
— Hans Dockter, Founder & CEO, Gradle Inc. (see his talk)
A recent report from Splunk found that organizations with strong observability practices see significant improvements in developer productivity and faster development cycles.
These "observability leaders" are better equipped to resolve issues quickly, optimize performance, and innovate, ultimately leading to better business outcomes and happier developers.
So what is the link between observability and developer productivity?
While Splunk's survey focuses on production system observability (using OpenTelemetry) rather than developer build and test toolchain observability, they see a positive trickle-down effect from a strong interest in overall production observability.
As Patrick Lin, SVP and GM of Observability at Splunk, writes: "Leaders not only achieve greater success in mitigating downtime, they also see greater developer innovation and speed.”
This should sound familiar to those adopting DPE practices, which prioritizes observability as a fundamental cornerstone. You cannot optimize what you cannot measure. And you cannot measure without the right tooling.
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