What is developer experience (DevEx)?

Developer experience (DevEx or DevX) refers to developers’ actions and feelings while interacting with development tools and processes. Improving the developer experience involves simplifying workflows, tools, and collaboration processes so developers struggle less in their day-to-day activities and can spend more time innovating.

In their daily work, developers focus on engineering and maintaining their organizations’ software applications. They create solutions that meet particular business or IT needs and want those applications to gain wide use throughout their company. They want to deliver working solutions on time, with as few bugs as possible, and that get positive feedback from customers and users.  

As a branch of user experience that focuses on developers, DevEx encourages organizations to pay attention to how developers do their work. DevEx focuses on how the processes and tools developers use contribute to or detract from the quality of their work as well as their satisfaction and productivity.

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Focusing on DevEx gives organizations insight into what is and isn’t working for the engineers who create business-critical applications and tools. DevEx isn’t (only) about making developers happy. It’s a core business differentiator because DevEx affects productivity, which ultimately affects success for the engineering organizations developers sit in and broader business outcomes. 

Improving the developer experience can increase innovation velocity, code quality, and DevOps transformation effectiveness. It can reduce the cognitive load on developers, and thus improve software quality. If developers feel their workflows are smoother, more efficient, and more effective, their productivity and satisfaction—and ultimately retention—will increase.