Aviator

Developers often hesitate to adopt new technologies, fearing that it may disrupt their workflow. But with Aviator, there’s nothing to fear! 🚀 “My favorite feature of Aviator is that you don’t see Aviator. You add the label in GitHub and you go do something else.” - Christopher Light, Principal Software Developer at Prodigy. Aviator integrates seamlessly, saving time without adding complexity to your existing workflow. Break free from the hesitation and unlock the effortless productivity boost you’ve been waiting for. Learn more about Aviator why developers like Chris love Aviator 💛 https://lnkd.in/dDHVsuwh #DeveloperExperience #Productivity

I recorded a podcast recently with Jonathan Magen about the case against standardization in developer workflows, and how it can impact innovation. Listen to the full episode on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Youtube or Substack: https://lnkd.in/gciJ2bVf Key takeaways 👇 - Standardization aims for consistency but can stifle innovation - Natural efficiencies do not emerge under aggressive standardization. - Good ideas can come from anywhere, not just platform teams - Cognitive load is a significant issue in software development - Finding a balance between standardization and optionality is crucial. - Innovation should be budgeted and planned for within teams. - The pioneers, settlers, and town planners model helps understand innovation roles. - Heavy governance can chill innovation; a culture of openness is needed. - Operational costs must be considered when adopting new technologies. - Standardization can create opportunities for innovation if managed well #standardization #developerexperience #innovation

As our tech stacks become increasingly complex, we're facing a crucial challenge that often goes unaddressed: the mounting cognitive load on developers 🤯 Think for a second, today's developer have to juggle with: - Migrations - Build failures - Code reviews - Task planning - Technical debt - Alignment meetings - Security requirements - Incident management - Fragmented documentation - Monitoring 10+ metrics dashboards - Multiple programming languages and frameworks and on top of that, engineering orgs run performance reviews and surveys to understand how the teams are doing! It not only impacts productivity but also causes burnouts! The most productive engineering cultures aren't just about coding faster—they're about creating environments that respect cognitive limits. - Limit meetings, let devs block time for deep work - Standardize workflows - Rely on automation wherever possible - Leave space for innovation, hackathons, and off-sites to foster creativity Let the fires burn - not every problem need to be solved, not every system need to be perfect! We should learn to prioritize, and maintain a trash can for everything else! #SoftwareDevelopment #DeveloperProductivity #Engineering

Contrary to popular belief, Continuous Delivery (CD) doesn’t mean we need to deploy software on every commit, every hour, or even every day! 🙀 1️⃣ CD is about creating a development practice where your software can be reliably deployed at any time. 2️⃣ It’s about being deployment ready—whether you release once a week or need to push a critical hotfix off-cycle. 🚨 3️⃣ That means CD doesn’t require automating every deployment or removing human intervention entirely ✨ 4️⃣ But unless you're practicing Trunk-Based Development, managing CD effectively is nearly impossible. Thank you Bryan Finster for bouncing off these ideas. I look forward to diving into this topic with out podcast next week! 🎙️ #continuousdelivery #dorametrics #devops

In our this month's edition of Hangar DX off-the-record sessions, I'm excited to host Mitali Parthasarathy from Yelp to talk about how they built and scaled their ownership system for developers. We will dive into: - why ownership matters for engineers - understanding codeowners - discuss why IDPs fall short at scale 📅 When: Friday, Oct 25 11am PT | 2pm ET 🎦 Where: Zoom 🔗 RSVP: https://lnkd.in/gcABqR2E We run these sessions as off-the-record to have candid conversations with a limited group of DevEx leaders. #developerexperience #ownership #offtherecord

I sat down with Chris Westerhold last week to discuss the case against metrics in developer productivity. Listen to the full episode on Spotify, YT, Apple Podcasts or Substack: https://lnkd.in/dpx4kJBK We dove into: - Why leadership is fixated on the metrics, and how to navigate the metrics overload - Why metrics should have a limited lifetime, and not all metrics are designed the same - How poorly designed metrics can lead teams into a bad direction - Specific examples where metrics can fail - build times, deploy times, code reviews velocity - Why we should avoid measuring things that don't provide actionable insights. - Understanding what really drives change, importance of qualitative data #developerproductivity #podcast #metrics

We hosted our second in-person Hangar DX meetup in collaboration with Reddit last Thursday. We had roundtables to discuss key DevEx topics like code reviews, code quality, metrics, flow state and influencing c-suite. Some takeaways 👇 - It’s important to have both speed and quality for code reviews. Breaking down your changes in smaller PRs (stacked PRs), and proactively identifying the right reviewers can help improve the response times. - Improving code quality is a collective effort - One way to assess code quality is asking devs if they are proud of the work they did. - Tests are good but chasing code coverage may not be worthwhile. Instead focus on test quality. - Maintaining flow state requires trust and sense of ownership. - Removing dependencies on others, and having clear documentation can help reduce the amount of interruptions. - Setting expectations of what’s urgent vs what’s not, and actively using DND on Slack can also help improve the flow state. - For better developer collaboration, track both qualitative and quantitative metrics. Some quantitative metrics can be easily gamified, watch out for that. - Get the right metrics and track over time for continuous improvements. - Execs care about accuracy and consistency, focus on that when presenting any metrics to the leadership. - Building trust is very important to influence C-suite. When servicing a metrics requests, try to understand who is asking for metrics and why. Thank you Ken Struys and the entire Reddit, Inc. team for hosting ~30 DX leaders from various companies. If you are interested in joining our virtual and IRL events, join us (link in comments). #developerproductivity #developerexperience #reddit

I am hosting a workshop focused on managing reliable software deployments with Vilas Veeraraghavan. We will discuss: - the challenges of building reliable delivery pipeline - understand how platform teams can "give away their legos" - while streamlining deploys, rollbacks and cherrypicks. Join us to learn how we are solving some of the core CD challenges at Aviator. 🎦 Where: Zoom 📅 When: Oct 18th, 10am PT | 1pm ET 🔗 RSVP: https://lu.ma/3l0gv9pc #workshop #devex #deployments

One of the best parts about working in the DevEx space, we get to meet some amazing people who are always finding new ways to make developers happy. Thank you Max Kanat-Alexander for sharing your wisdom during the dinner, and thank you everyone else who joined us! #developerexperience #dpesummit

You don't need true CD to be an elite DevOps organization! The value of CD practice isn't the continuous deployment itself... It's actually reducing the cognitive load 🧠 Last night, I was chatting with Adam Berry about CD general practices, and this topic came up. We discussed: - State of DevOps report claims that if you deploy a few times a week, you are already in top 15% category. Nathen Harvey thoughts? 👀 - CD does not have a concrete definition: is it every commit, automated but single loop, scheduled deploys - CD is easy to setup with the modern tools, the challenge is organizational mindset shift - Teams who rely on manual deploys struggle because of cognitive load that it creates for the person deploying (fear of deployments) - A daily scheduled deploy, or even an automated deploy where one can "build and deployed with a single click" significantly reduces that cognitive load The incremental gain if we deploy once a day or several times a day is minimal. Reducing cognitive load for developers is much more powerful. That's what DevOps organizations should strive for. #devops #dora #cicd