Michael Hicks is Senior Vice President and Chief Information Officer at Jackson.
As a teenager in the 1980s, my initial love of technology came from watching movies like Back to the Future, where the infamous Doc Brown had the ingenuity to build the flux capacitor, which made time travel possible. Imagine what would have happened if Doc Brown spent endless hours in unnecessary meetings, didn’t have access to the right tools, and didn’t have time to experiment with new concepts and ideas.
You guessed it: He couldn’t have built a time machine, let alone a DeLorean time machine, because, as he says, “The way I see it if you’re going to put a time machine in a car, why not do it in style?”
While a flux capacitor may not be in the cards for your company, if you want to build a differentiated technology solution to solve your biggest business challenge or address your biggest opportunity, it can’t be achieved without having a motivated, empowered team and focused technology.
This is why developer experience (DX) is so important. DX puts software developers and engineers at the center of creating great solutions, redefining the tools, processes and culture necessary to thrive.
Using AI Tools
Evolving from a lightning strike in 1955 to a plutonium reactor in 1985, the tools Doc Brown used to generate the 1.21 gigawatts necessary to power his flux capacitor have advanced over the years. This is also true with software development and the emergence of AI coding assistants, which have now transformed the traditional developer toolbox. Coding assistants like GitHub Copilot and Amazon CodeWhisperer use GenAI to help developers write and debug code and become a force multiplier to improve productivity and quality.
Ultimately, what developers enjoy most is the art of problem solving, and these new AI tools allow them to solve problems better and faster and create the ability to infuse greater innovation into their solutions. However, without proper training and change management to encourage adoption, these benefits will never be fully realized.
Process Streamlining
Minimizing context switching to achieve a flow state is where the magic happened for Doc Brown, but enabling this for developers is a significant challenge. With that said, let’s talk about the elephant in the room – governance.
Most will agree that the logic behind governance is good, but not the command-and-control approach, nor the endless meetings that take developers away from coding. It is imperative that leaders fine-tune their processes and reduce the number of meetings required to ensure the value achieved is worth the effort.
Reducing friction in the developer process can be achieved by implementing continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) pipeline automation with built-in governance. By breaking down the walls between development, security, and IT functions, CI/CD pipelines free developers by automating repetitive tasks and accelerating code development. This also leads to higher quality and reduces the likelihood that developers will be pulled away from coding to fix production issues.
Innovation through culture
Doc Brown demonstrated the need for effective collaboration when he worked in an unusual way with his “best friend”, Einstein, who was also his partner in temporary experiment number one at Twin Pines Mall.
A culture where collaborative solutions and knowledge sharing are embraced is also essential to a great developer experience. This includes implementing pair programming, where developers work together to solve complex problems and create Communities of Practice to facilitate the exchange of ideas while building camaraderie and professional pride.
Culture is a driver of innovation, as evidenced by open source revolutionizing the software industry by making source code available to developer communities. This same idea can also accelerate innovation in a company. Innersource brings open source practices to a technology organization and encourages collaboration between development teams to build better software and reuse code in new solutions.
Getting started
Doc Brown personified the exuberance of a programmer when he declared, “When this baby hits 88 miles an hour, you’re going to see some serious s**t!” While we are not inventing time machines, enabling DX with AI tools, improved processes and a culture of innovation can lead to great solutions.
Indeed, McKinsey quantified the impact of DX and found that companies with top quartile developer velocity have 60% higher total shareholder returns and 55% more innovation than bottom quartile companies.
Regardless of company size or industry, adopting strong DX principles can be the catalyst to take your performance to the next level. In this age of unprecedented digital disruption and artificial intelligence, investing in your technology team can be the difference between prosperity and survival. Unfortunately, time travel only happens in the movies, so if you haven’t started your DX journey yet, there’s no time like the present!
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