Introducing Developer Velocity Lab – A Research Initiative to Amplify Developer Work and Well-Being

Developer Velocity is an important and integral part of developer productivity, and software development is at the core of how organizations run. Improving developer velocity is critical to continued satisfaction, iteration, and innovation in software teams. Today, Microsoft is doubling down on its commitment to improving developers' work and well-being. Microsoft and GitHub are proud to present Developer Velocity Lab (DVL), a joint research initiative that will live in Microsoft Research.

Microsoft believes scientific advances through research are a fundamental part of how we empower people through our products and impact society more generally. Johannes Gehrke, Microsoft Research Technical Fellow and Lab Director notes, “Microsoft Research is transforming the world through deep research. We are excited to invest into research to empower developers to achieve more.” With DVL, we’re creating a mission-focused initiative about developers, which signals our belief in the importance of the developer community. Leading this research initiative is Dr. Nicole Forsgren, VP Research and Strategy at GitHub. Her industry leading work in DevOps and software development metrics includes authoring the Shingo Publication Award-winning book Accelerate: The Science of Lean Software and DevOps. In Nicole’s own words, “Creating a better experience for the world’s developers is core to the future of our digital world – whether that’s through advanced tooling or low/no-code. I’m thrilled to be leading the initiative in DVL.”

DVL's mission is to discover, improve, and amplify developer work and well-being. We do this through socio-technical investigations in the following focus areas:

Productivity. Investigate ways to measure and improve developer productivity so we can help everyone work better, faster, smarter, and more securely. This includes investigations of low-code, no-code, and work at the intersection of code and ML and AI.

Community. Study the ways that people communicate, collaborate, share knowledge, and build communities when they build software. An important aspect of this is making all kinds of software development more accessible, inclusive, and sustainable.

Well-being. Investigate the intersections of happiness, satisfaction, and personal value with software development activities so we can find ways to make development more fun, enjoyable, and sustainable.

As DVL continues to grow, this will include cultivating a community of researchers, organizations, and developers who share our love and commitment to this work. Our goal is for everyone to benefit from our research, with the intent to develop easily accessible work, optimized for developers and their communities. DVL will commit to making the bulk of our findings open, accessible, and available. We hope that you’ll follow along and utilize our upcoming work.

The SPACE of Developer Productivity

DVL's first publication, The SPACE of Developer Productivity: There's more to it than you think, introduces a framework to help individuals, teams, and organizations measure developer productivity in a more holistic and impactful way.  The framework includes five dimensions of software development to present a more complete picture of productivity and well-being. The framework is easily adaptable and flexible to many contexts. By including measures across multiple dimensions (we recommend at least three), teams and organizations can make better decisions and see better outcomes.

To learn more, watch Nicole present a deep dive into the SPACE framework and its five dimensions, which are S: satisfaction and well-being, P: performance, A: activity, C: communication and collaboration, and E: efficiency and flow. She’ll also discuss the ins and outs of developer productivity, sharing common misconceptions as well as example metrics and how the framework can work for you.

SPACE Framework in Action: The Good Day Project

In conjunction with DVL’s launch, GitHub published  The Good Day Project – Personal analytics for good days. The research presented a first look at the SPACE framework, a two-week study that invited GitHub developers to take a survey and share their engineering data to help identify what patterns and practices could help them have “good days.” A few overarching discoveries into patterns the team found:

Finding flow is key, and interruptions are a drag. Minimal or no interruptions give developers an 82% chance of having a good day, but interruptions throughout the day decrease the chance of a good day to just 7%.

Meetings are both awesome and terrible. Collaboration improves our work, but too many meetings can be a blocker; going from two to three meetings per day lowered the chances of developers making progress toward their goals by 60%.

A two minute daily reflection can help developers improve their days. Developers reported the daily reflection was a great new habit, and seeing patterns gave them clear ideas for what to change in their days.

The data was also used to classify developers’ days as Flowing or Disrupted. Taking a look at these classifications shows us:

When the study concluded, each participant received a personalized report to help them optimize their days moving forward. To glean more insight, including the full survey, read the report.