ANIn Pune Sep 2024 | From Friction to Flow: Empowering Developers with IDP by Nilesh Kulkarni

© 2024 Thoughtworks | Restricted
Disclaimer by Speaker
1. Views, thoughts, and opinions expressed in the session and presentation, collectively referred as “the content”, belong solely to me/us in my/our
personal capacity, and not necessarily to my/our employer / organization / client, etc.
2. “The content” is based on my/our learning, experience as well as knowledge gathered through material available publicly on the internet.
3. I/We do not endorse or promote any organization, committee, product or person through this session.
4. I/We have agreed to the Code of Conduct, Privacy Policy, Speaker Engagement Policy as referred in the Speaker Application Form submitted by me/us or
on my/our behalf on the Agile Network India website.
Sachin Dharmapurikar
Nilesh Kulkarni

From Friction to Flow :
Empowering Developers with IDP
Sachin Dharmapurikar
Nilesh Kulkarni
2

© 2024 Thoughtworks | Restricted 3
© 2023 Thoughtworks, Inc.
“The system that people work in and the
interaction with people may account for 90 or 95
percent of performance.”
- W. Edwards Deming

What drains productivity
and blocks ﬂow?
x
Finding information
Slow feedback
Cognitive friction
DX friction
Operating model friction
Where teams spend their time
Value-add
delivery
< 30%
> 70%
Overhead /
Waste
Value-add
delivery
60%
Current
state
Future
state
4

and blocks ﬂow?
Developer Experience friction
Friction in finding essential information
Cognitive overload / task switching
Slow feedback loops (quality,functionality)
x
Finding information
Slow feedback
Cognitive friction
DX friction
Value-add
delivery
< 30%
> 70%
Overhead /
Waste
Value-add
delivery
60%
Current
state
Future
state
5

and blocks ﬂow?
Developer Experience friction
Friction in finding essential information
Cognitive overload / task switching
Slow feedback loops (quality,functionality)
x
Finding information
Slow feedback
Cognitive friction
DX friction
Value-add
delivery
< 30%
> 70%
Overhead /
Waste
Value-add
delivery
60%
Current
state
Future
state
6
Do you know how much time teams
spend in value add activities?

“[In the majority of organizations], software
developers only spend 30-40% of their time
on feature development”
- State of DevOps Report 2018,2019

“The Developer Coefficientˮ - Stripe 2018

“You can’t (effectively) measure engineering
productivity directly, but you can measure &
eliminate waste.” (paraphrased)
- Google, Nicole Forsgren, and many others

Cost of engineering is skyrocketing /
Need to “do more with lessˮ
Competitivity & Time to Value
Predictability
Why IDPs are linked to Engineering Effectiveness?
Industry Trend
Over the last 3+ years,
industry leading organizations
have taken a systematic
approach to engineering
productivity
Internal engineering
effectiveness working groups
@ Amazon, Google, Spotify,
Etsy, and so on)
Talent acquisition & retention

Dev Portals drive significant savings and productivity
Developer Onboarding Time
The more complex an ecosystem the harder it is to become productive.
Developer portals can decrease the time to productivity by over 66%
Example metric: time to 10th PR.1
Developer Productivity
Frequent portal users create 2x more code changes and development cycle
time was 17% faster, resulting in an estimated 33% gain in team productivity.1
Deployment Frequency
Frequent portal users deploy 2x more frequently, when compounded can
dramatically increase feedback cycles and reduce wasted work.1
Increased talent retention
Frequent portal users have a 5% higher retention rate, which translates to
savings of more than $1M in costs of employee churn.1
Increased ROI on engineering
platform & cloud investments
Developer portals accelerate adoption of engineering and cloud platform
infrastructure standards and practices. Toyota reported a $5M reduction of
cloud costs after implementing Backstage2
. Adoption of developer
accelerators can save $50k per new service or application created3
.
1. https://backstage.spotify.com/blog/how-spotify-measures-backstage-roi/
2. https://backstage.spotify.com/blog/adopter-spotlight-toyota/
3. Thoughtworks Client Case Study

Modern Developer Portal
12
A developer portal is a key enabler towards any
platform, developer experience, or productivity
journey.
Leverage a developer portal or platform to
surface key insights from across the developer
ecosystem, to solve knowledge management
problems, and as a feedback mechanism to
platforms teams.
Developer
Portal
Products Interfaces
SDK / HDK CLI
Feedback
channel
Community
Code
examples
Documentation
Guidance Services
API
Product /
Platform
Developer
Portal
Libraries
Frameworks
Toolsets
Machine-to-
machine
Enablement &
Training
Knowledge
base
Shortcuts
Support
Help
commands
GUI

A “single pane of glass” for software development
● Documentation as
code
● Architectural
Design Records
and Standards
● Tech Radar
● Domain models
● Boilerplate code
on new software
● Integrated
Platform tooling
and best
practices
● Security, and
Quality by default
● Discoverability
and access to
platform
capabilities
● Fully integrated
into Starter Kits
● Reduce time to
learn systems
● Entry point for all
documentation
● Increase
developer focus
time
● Contextualized
reports and
metrics
● Consolidated
information from
across the
organization
● Easily find
resources across
the engineering
landscape
● Reduce
duplication of
services while
improving quality
Architectural
Alignment
Accelerate Team
Onboarding
Platform Tooling
Adoption
Knowledge
Management
Engineering
Insights
Visibility
and Discovery
Discovery
& Visibility
Productivity
& Self-Service
Governance
& Metrics
Enable optimization across engineering practices
Developer
Portal

© 2023 Thoughtworks, Inc. Commercial in Confidence
What makes
a great
Developer
Portal
Search Scaffolding Engine
● Search across your ecosystem without
having to consolidate everything to one
tool.
● Already plugins for common plugins like
Techdocs or things like confluence.
● Flexible Backend which can use
Solr/Lunr, Elasticsearch, or Postgres
● Build from common Actions using a
standard YAML format.
● Create orchestrations, including the UI
and API calls, through basic YAML
configuration
● Can be used to support many common
actions like repo creation, requesting
certs, new team creation, or onboarding.
TechDocs Catalog
● Powered by MKDocs ecosystem with a
wide range of plugins
● Documentation that sits alongside a
services code
● Docs that are deployed with the code
making staging of information as easy as
staging the code itself
● Highly configurable taxonomy that can
be used for microservices, data
marketplace, or just about anything
across an organization
● Plugin architecture aligns with catalog
contexts making information easily
available
A portal that solves:

Define New Service Create Repo
Add Tools, services,
frameworks, standards
Available in Dev Env.
Kick off pipeline
Push Code to Repo
Create skeleton code
Run Tests
Scan Pipeline artifacts
Automate Repo Creation | Dev Portal | 1 day → 1 min
Clone Starter Kit | Dev Portal | 12+ days → 1 min
Source of waste:
Writing unnecessary code
Not utilizing available cloud infrastructure
Creating security vulnerabilities
Deviation from architecture standards
Inner Sourcing | CoE / Governance | 5+ days
→ 1 min
Source of waste:
Deviation from architecture standards
Pipeline Artifacts | Platform Engineering | 5
days → 1 min
Source of waste:
Lack of metrics
Validation and monitoring of gates
Optimized Gates and Approvals | Core Engineering | 1 day → 1 min
Pipeline Artifacts | Platform Engineering | 5
days → 1 min
Source of waste:
Lack of metrics
Validation and monitoring of gates
Template Example: Creation of a new Service
New service creation is filled with waste and friction
along with missing standards. Templatizing the
creation process reduces ecosystem fragmentation,
standards are met by default, with business value
being added on day 1.
Total time lost of 3-6 weeks

Inadequate
funding for the
IDP
1.
Quiz time! ❓🙌
In a large beverage company with over 5000 developers, the CTO aimed to enhance the
developer experience. One of the teams we were working with only discovered the
existence of the company's internal developer portal IDP) after completing an
assessment and receiving our recommendation. What was the most likely cause of this
situation?
Lack of
awareness
about the IDP
2.
Technical
difficulties
with the IDP
3.
Resistance to
change from
developers
4.
16

Inadequate
funding for the
IDP
1.
Quiz time! ❓🙌
In a large beverage company with over 5000 developers, the CTO aimed to enhance the
developer experience. One of the teams we were working with only discovered the
existence of the company's internal developer portal IDP) after completing an
assessment and receiving our recommendation. What was the most likely cause of this
situation?
Lack of
awareness
about the IDP
2.
Technical
difficulties
with the IDP
3.
Resistance to
change from
developers
4.
17
✔

Implementing Dev Portal is a Transformation,
which requires change management.

Success Factors

Key success factors
A dev portal is part of a developer
experience journey that requires a
constant feedback from the community.
Using this information as the basis of
your roadmap is key towards early
success.
A portal that is never adopted is the
epitome of wasted time and resources.
DevEx, and a portal, should be done with
the community not to it. Takes a
cultural shift
Requires a
new way of
thinking
20
Start with the
Why
There is no
easy button
Other
Factor
s

Product Management is critical to success
True focus on solving engineering problems is the key to successful adoption.
Having someone who has a focus on overall UX, metrics, user feedback, and focus
areas is critical to the success of any developer portal.
Survey/capability
maturity model
Measure Define
Set metric baseline
Define operational
process
Technical
solutioning
Value articulation
Build
Technical/operation
al release
Build release/
training plan
Iterate
Measure metric
impact
Gather user
feedback

© 2023 Thoughtworks, Inc. Commercial in Confidence 22
Experience & Design are
critical to Adoption
Experience
A large catalog of components, APIs, resources or any
other components can be highly granular and hard to
understand. Keeping the user experience in mind is
critical to reducing cognitive load and increase
discoverability.
Catalog Design
Creating a well thought out user experience by
domain, discipline, or role is a critical the reduction of
complexity and the overall user experience. This
includes a well curated taxonomy across the different
catalog types.
Data
Products
Components
Catalog
Experience Layer
API & SDK
Docs Plugins
CLI &
LIbraries

Assess and Align
Understand your organization's specific engineering challenges and secure executive buy-in to ensure strategic alignment.
Foster a Culture of Change
Encourage experimentation, open communication, and collaboration to facilitate smooth IDP adoption.
Empower Developers
Prioritize self-service capabilities, automation, and knowledge-sharing within the IDP to boost productivity and innovation.
Implement Strategically
Adopt a phased rollout approach, identify internal champions, and track key metrics to measure progress and demonstrate value.
Manage Change Effectively
Communicate transparently, address resistance proactively, and celebrate incremental wins to drive adoption and maximize
benefits.
Key Takeaways
23

Thank you!
24

ANIn Pune Sep 2024 | From Friction to Flow: Empowering Developers with IDP by Nilesh Kulkarni

More Related Content

Similar to ANIn Pune Sep 2024 | From Friction to Flow: Empowering Developers with IDP by Nilesh Kulkarni (20)

More from AgileNetwork (20)

Recently uploaded (20)

ANIn Pune Sep 2024 | From Friction to Flow: Empowering Developers with IDP by Nilesh Kulkarni