Reimagining DORA Metrics & Leveraging Feature Flags
Plus, how to save $1.5 million, codebase-complexity horror stories, what makes Threads interesting, and the benefits of a funny job title.
Does the emergence of feature flags affect the interpretation and utility of DORA metrics?
On this week’s episode of Dev Interrupted, host Dan Lines and Ariel Perez, VP of Engineering at Split.io, discuss the state of DORA metrics and whether they need reimaging in a world of feature flags. Listen as Ariel explains why he believes feature flags are more than a tool, and have begun to reshape our understanding of software development and the metrics we use to measure it.
Dan and Ariel also touch on how feature flags can drastically reduce lead time and mean time to recover, and conclude their chat with an intriguing look at the granular nature of control in the modern software engineering landscape, where the unit of control has shifted from the application as a whole to individual features.
“ The reality is that about 70% of everything you put in production has either little or negative value.
So only 30% of what you're doing actually has value for the customer. It's unbelievable, right? So how do you think about that idea of value? The reimagined world of DORA metrics with feature flags and that granularity help you ship faster.”
Episode Highlights:
(2:05) Introduction
(7:15) Pursuing productivity at the expense of effectiveness
(15:50) Project allocation discussion
(24:55) Reimagining DORA metrics
(31:30) Radical ideas for DORA
(41:25) How teams should invest in shipping faster
The Download
The Download is engineering leadership content we’re reading, watching, and attending that we think you might find valuable.
1. Saving $1.5 million by leaving the cloud
In the year of efficiency that is 2023, it’s been every engineering leaders’ job to look at how to get more value out of the orgs they have. In the case of Basecamp and Ruby on Rails creator David Heinemeier Hansson, he found an extra couple million dollars from his HEY tech department by doing what no one was really thinking about: Leaving the cloud.
Read: Why We Left The Cloud
2. A scary tale of codebase complexity
Dev Interrupted loves a good learning-through-mistakes story. Daniel Beck has made it his pet project to catalog these scary coding stories - this one on teammates who refactor code based on personal taste without proper documentation or completeness is a doozy.
Read: A Horror Story In Codebase Complexity
This week’s Download is sponsored by the FINAL workshop in the Benchmark → Automate → Improve Summer Series.
Benchmark. Automate. Improve. These are the most important themes that drive elite engineering organizations. That’s why we’ve set up three workshops over the summer on how to practically apply each of these to your own development teams.
Benchmarks focuses on how elite engineering teams use metrics. Automate looks at how automation has been used at elite orgs to improve developer workflows. Improve is a guide on how the top 10% of teams allocate developer resources.
3. Should you care about Threads?
The MMA fight between Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg may never materialize, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t in a Silicon Valley street fight. With the out-of-nowhere launch of Threads, a Twitter competitor with the backing of Meta is now available. Even more intriguing? Rumors are swirling Threads was built by only a handful of engineers in less than six months.
does a great job of figuring out whether or not this is something you should care about.
4. The benefits of changing your title to "Jr. Probationary Intern"
Never forget: The engineering community is still the funniest, most irreverent, and knowledgeable community out there. How you bring that human element to the table as a VP of engineering is up to you. You can always start by changing your Slack title like Carolyn Vo does.
Last Chance! Join the 2023 State of DevOps Report!
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The survey takes just 15 minutes. It tells researchers how you develop and deliver software, all to help us collectively understand how to make the software world better for everyone in the DI community and beyond!