What is Developer Experience?

While answers to that question exist, there is often variance and vagueness around what improves and who benefits. All existing definitions surprisingly omit explicitly improving developers’ experiences.

The User Experience community reduces variance and includes experience improvement by defining “a user experience” and “the field of User Experience” separately.

This post brings the same clarity to Developer Experience definitions, while also connecting the pieces of what improves and who benefits. It defines “A developer experience”, “The Field of Developer Experience”, and how the field of Developer Experience relates to Developer Productivity. It also provides previous definitions and sources that led to them.

What is A Developer Experience?

A developer experience is the holistic relationship — encompassing perceptions, emotions, and interactions — between a software developer and a part of their work context (e.g., a tool, person, platform, feedback loop, portal, process, workflow, activity, document, system, culture, or physical environment).

What is The Field of Developer Experience (DX, DevEx)?

The Field of Developer Experience is a professional practice focused on continuously improving stakeholder and business outcomes, by improving developers experiences, by optimizing the non-human factors in developers’ work context (e.g., tools, platforms, feedback loops, portals, processes, workflows, activities, documents, systems, cultures, or physical environments). It assumes that good experiences correlate positively with improved business and stakeholder outcomes (an assumption supported by research), and that asking developers is the most efficient and effective way to surface problems with those experiences.

How Does Developer Experience Relate to Developer Productivity?

Developer Productivity is a highly ambiguous term today. It may mean the same thing as the Field of Developer Experience, but it may also mean simple efficiency metrics like PRs/day, or even strategies like telling developers to work faster. That ambiguity can make it harder to build trust and gain adoption for improvement initiatives, so I highly recommend renaming Developer Productivity.

A Developer Experience - Synthesized from Previous Definitions

Neilsen/Norman Group’s 2024 UX definition:

• “A user experience (UX) is the holistic relationship — encompassing perceptions, emotions, and interactions — between a person and a product, service, or company.” - Neilsen Norman Group

Related Developer Experience definitions:

• Developer experience is how developers feel about the tools and processes they use to create software… - Atlassian
• Developer experience (DevEx, DX) is the overall experience of a developer when they are building software in a team. - Swarmia
• Developer experience (DevEx) refers to how developers perceive and interact with their work environment… - DX
• [Developer Experience is] How developers think about, feel about, and value their work. - DX Research Paper

Synthesized Definition: A developer experience is the holistic relationship — encompassing perceptions, emotions, and interactions — between a software developer and a part of their work context (e.g., a tool, person, platform, feedback loop, portal, process, workflow, activity, document, system, culture, or physical environment).

Similar to the UX and related definitions above, this definition focuses on developers’ personal aspects like thoughts, emotions, and behaviors/interactions. The field focuses on stakeholder and business outcomes instead.

The Field of Developer Experience (DX, DevEx) - Synthesized from Previous Definitions

Neilsen/Norman Group’s 2024 UX Field definition:

• “The field of user experience (UX) is a professional practice focused on designing and enhancing the interactions and overall experience for all users of a product, service, or brand.” - Neilsen Norman Group

Related Developer Experience definitions:

• Developer experience (DevEx) refers to how developers perceive and interact with their work environment across four key dimensions: speed, effectiveness, quality, and business impact. - DX
• DevEx refers to the systems, technology, process, and culture that influence the effectiveness of software development. - Github
• We define the developer experience as the skills, tools, frameworks, and methodologies aimed at creating, maintaining, and enhancing code throughout the entire software delivery lifecycle (from creation through production) and improving developer productivity, both individually and collectively. - Forrester
• Developer experience refers to the overall satisfaction and productivity of software developers when using tools, frameworks and platforms to build applications. - Gartner

Synthesized Definition: The Field of Developer Experience is a professional practice focused on continuously improving stakeholder and business outcomes, by improving developers experiences, by optimizing the non-human factors in developers’ work context (e.g., tools, platforms, feedback loops, portals, processes, workflows, activities, documents, systems, cultures, or physical environments).

Surprisingly unlike the UX Field definition, existing Developer Experience definitions omit improving developer experiences. Most even omit developer-specific outcomes like satisfaction. To be fair, the source articles usually mention improving some developer-specific outcomes. Regardless, it makes sense for a DX Field definition itself to include improving developer experiences since they are both outcomes and leading indicators (as increasingly supported by research).

Regarding optimizing “non-human” factors in the synthesized definition, attempting to directly manipulate experiences (perceptions, emotions, interactions) without consent is unethical. Further, persuading developers to change their own experiences is usually an unsustainable approach to improving outcomes without accompanying context changes. Consider improving a team’s PR response time to 24 hours. Asking developers to respond faster (an interaction) may work briefly, but response time will eventually regress above 24 hours. Context changes like PR review reminders help reach and maintain such targets.