Microsoft
Developer
Experience

Inspire, support, and empower distributed developer teams.

Measuring impact

Microsoft Research’s Nicole Forsgren and GitHub Next’s Eirini Kalliamvakou discuss how to measure developer experience more holistically in the era of AI with SPACE methodology.

Developer
Experience Lab

Teams need to connect and collaborate seamlessly, no matter where they are. In the Developer Experience Lab, a co-Microsoft and GitHub research hub, we aim to better understand developers and how to help them thrive. These insights guide the future of our developer tools and processes—all designed to optimize focus, encourage collaboration, and foster creative thinking to help developers bring their boldest ideas to life.

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Satisfaction
and wellbeing

Satisfaction

How fulfilled do developers feel with their work, team, tools, or culture?

Wellbeing

How healthy and happy are developers?

Example metrics

Employee satisfaction
Developer efficacy
Engagement
Burnout

Performance

Evaluate the outcome of a system or process. Performance is difficult to quantify because there are so many variables.

Example metrics

Quality of code:

Reliability
Absence of bugs
Ongoing service health

Impact of code:

Customer satisfaction
Customer adoption and retention
Feature usage
Cost reduction

Activity

Understand the number of actions or outputs completed in the course of performing work.

Example metrics

Design and coding
Continuous integration and deployment
Operational activity
Intractable activities

Communication
and collaboration

Capture how people and teams communicate and work together.

Example metrics

Discoverability of documentation and expertise
How quickly work is integrated
Quality of reviews of work contributed by team members
Network metrics that show who is connected to whom and how

Efficiency and flow

Gauge how well developers and teams can make progress on their work or complete it without interruptions or delays.

Example metrics

Number of handoffs in a process
Number of handoffs across different teams in a process
Perceived ability to stay in flow and complete work
Interruptions
Time measured through a system

“

If you go and ask a hundred developers, what does productivity mean to you, you're going to get a hundred different answers. Productivity is not just one thing, it's many things. It means different things to different people. And so having this more holistic lens allows us to evaluate how various things impact productivity and wellbeing.

Brian Houck, Principal Productivity Engineer, Microsoft

“

We are going through a seismic shift in the way that developers do their job. If you look at things through only one dimension, you're not going to fully understand what's happening.

Brian Houck, Principal Productivity Engineer, Microsoft

“

SPACE as a framework is not just a way to measure productivity. It can also be a way to think about how can I design solutions, answers, or interventions to help myself, my team, or my organization be more productive.

Nicole Forsgren, Microsoft Research Partner