Cultivating developer experience: The key to DevOps success

At GBH, Developer Experience (DevEx or DX) is part of our everyday lives. We strive to build a development team where ideas flow freely, collaboration is the norm, and job satisfaction fills the air. We want developers to feel valued, empowered, and motivated to do their best work.

With these goals in mind, among other initiatives, we built a DevOps culture centered around developer happiness, which has resulted in more productive teams, higher-quality digital products, an exceptional work environment, and a consistent people-centered culture.

How do we achieve this?

Empowering Developers

In our commitment to team success, we empower our developers to move faster, develop and test features safely, and deploy confidently by focusing on self-service capabilities and a robust CI/CD pipeline. This self-service approach allows developers to work efficiently and independently, leading to faster feature development and deployment and greatly impacting their overall motivation and happiness.

Here’s how we empower developers:

• Self-service provisioning so that engineers can easily access and configure application environments, consume database backups from production with obfuscated/transformed sensitive data, and use a safe local connection to any third-party integration for a fully functional local environment and full access to logs, media, configuration parameters, etc.
• Defining and using automated testing and deployment pipelines so that tasks like code testing, security checks, and deployments are automated, freeing developers to focus on innovation and quality.
• Use feature-flag management to safely introduce new features to a limited audience, promoting developer confidence in deploying new features to production.
• Preview (Review) environments so that developers have full access to dynamic, isolated, and temporary application environments with a sanitized database for realistic testing.

Building a Strong Team Culture

Beyond tools and methodologies, we believe a strong team culture is essential. Our engineers feel valued and empowered to express themselves openly. We foster this through practices like:

• Collaborative code reviews that promote knowledge sharing and trust among other engineers and incentivize a focus on quality.
• Use open communication channels where developers can share ideas and concerns with direct visibility and interaction with their assigned clients.
• Building autonomy and empowerment in our developers, trusting them to make decisions and solve problems. We empower them to choose the tools and technologies that best suit their needs and encourage them to experiment and innovate.
• We invest in continuous learning and growth, offering people opportunities to learn new skills and stay current on the latest trends. We also have an open and transparent competency framework on which career growth inside GBH is evaluated by both the engineers and their leaders, fostering a mutual understanding of expectations and clear, objective objectives to pursue.

This positive and collaborative environment fosters continuous learning and growth, ultimately leading to a more productive and successful development team.

A Real-World Example: The Story of Anna

Anna, a senior software developer at GBH, used to feel frustrated at their previous job. The tools were outdated, communication was lacking, and the environment downright hostile. When she joined GBH, it was a night-and-day difference. Now, Anna has access to the latest tools and technologies and feels valued for her ideas and contributions without fear of judgment. She is encouraged to experiment and collaborate with other teams.

The result: Anna became a happier and more productive developer. Her work improved significantly, and she became a key member of our team.

Anna’s experience isn’t unique. Many developers have undergone a similar transformation after joining our developer-happiness-centered DevOps culture.

The results speak for themselves:

• Increased productivity: Our developers are more efficient and produce higher-quality code.
• Better digital products: Our products are more reliable, scalable, and user-friendly.
• Higher team member satisfaction: Our developers are happier and more engaged in daily tasks.
• Lower team member turnover: We retain our top talent, saving us time and resources.

We’re a leader in DX culture

At GBH, DX is more than just a strategy; it’s how we work. Happy developers are the foundation for innovation and building strong client relationships.

Why work with us?

• A passionate and committed team: Our happy developers are highly skilled experts dedicated to creating exceptional digital solutions for our clients.
• Collaboration from day one: We work closely with you from the beginning of the project, ensuring perfect alignment with your needs and goals.
• Constant innovation: Our team always looks for new ways to improve and develop creative solutions that drive your business’ success.

Want to experience the difference of working with a happy and client-focused team? Contact us today to begin your journey toward digital excellence together!