Introducing the DX Core 4
A new unified framework for measuring developer productivity that encompasses DORA, SPACE, and DevEx.
Welcome to the latest issue of Engineering Enablement, a weekly newsletter sharing research and perspectives on developer productivity. If you want insights like this delivered to your inbox, subscribe here:
This is a special issue to announce the DX Core 4, a unified framework for measuring developer productivity that encompasses DORA, SPACE, and DevEx.
The backstory: Over the years, there has been significant progress in developer metrics frameworks. Nicole Forsgren, Margaret-Anne (Peggy) Storey, Michaela Greiler, and I published the DevEx framework last year. Before that, Nicole had pioneered the DORA metrics and she and Peggy had published SPACE.
With the attention that the DevEx framework received, we began fielding lots of questions about how DORA, SPACE, and DevEx compare, and what to measure given the different frameworks. This came to a head for me personally after multiple conversations where executives asked me, “So what exactly should we be measuring?” and my answer was, “It depends.” These leaders wanted something more prescriptive, and we didn’t have a good answer for them.
In response,
(DX CTO) and I got to work on developing something new: a framework that encapsulates DORA, SPACE, and DevEx while providing a prescriptive approach. We involved Nicole, Michaela, Tom Zimmerman, and numerous experts and DX customers who helped us iterate on this framework over the course of several months. This culminated in the DX Core 4.Keep reading for a summary of the framework. For more, check out the full whitepaper and downloadable industry benchmarks. You can also join the discussion on LinkedIn here.
Why a new framework?
The DX Core 4 was created to answer the question “what should we measure?”. Previous frameworks like DORA, SPACE, and DevEx each provide important lenses into the problem but not a holistic answer:
DORA offers prescriptive metrics but has limited scope and usefulness due to focus on system performance.
SPACE provides a framework for defining your own metrics, which is difficult to actually do.
DevEx focuses on developer experience and self-reported metrics, but it is isolated from the broader concept of productivity.
Our aim with the DX Core 4 was to combine DORA, SPACE, and DevEx into a prescriptive framework that would be meaningful and useful to stakeholders across the business (EMs, CTO, CEO, CFO), measurable in a consistent way across most companies.
What is the DX Core 4?
The DX Core 4 framework captures developer productivity through four dimensions: speed, effectiveness, quality, and impact. Within each dimension there are primary and secondary metrics. The metrics have been carefully selected and are what we recommend using, although they can be adapted.
Here’s an overview of the key metrics for the DX Core 4 framework:
Speed: The primary metric for Speed is Diffs per Engineer (or PRs per Engineer), which provides a snapshot of the flow of work through the system. It is critical that this metric is never used at the individual level or tied to performance evaluations. Additionally, it must be counterbalanced with other oppositional metrics like the Developer Experience Index (DXI). For more on PRs per Engineer, see my interview with Brian Houck, co-author of SPACE.
Effectiveness: We measure effectiveness through the Developer Experience Index (DXI), which measures key performance drivers that drive engineering speed and quality. The DXI is an aggregated score from 14 standardized Likert-scale survey items, measuring a wide range of areas such as code quality, focus time, and CI/CD.
Quality: Change Failure Rate is the primary metric for Quality, measuring how often changes deployed to production result in failures. CFR ensures that a focus on speed does not come at the cost of stability or reliability.
Impact: The key metric for Impact is the Percentage of Time Spent on New Capabilities, which reflects how much engineering effort is focused on building new features versus maintenance or KLTO work. A low percentage here might indicate teams are bogged down by inefficiencies or legacy systems, limiting their ability to innovate and deliver value to customers.
Applying the framework
The DX Core 4 metrics are designed to inform decisions and discussions across all levels of the organization, from the boardroom to frontline teams.
For organizations without system-based data already instrumented, surveys can capture metrics across much of the framework, allowing for establishing baselines quickly. Where applicable, system data provides higher precision and continuity for organizations that can instrument the data.
An important part of rolling out the DX Core 4 is communicating it transparently. The DX Core 4 metrics are as relevant to individual development teams as they are to the business. Create a plan to communicate how these metrics are collected and how they will be used with all members of your organization.
It’s critical that leaders position these metrics in a way where they are showing up as allies to developers. These metrics are about helping developers by understanding their friction points and addressing them.
Final thoughts
The challenge of not knowing what to measure shows up in different ways. It’s the executive struggling to articulate overall productivity in leadership or board meetings. Or a Developer Productivity leader lacking a shared language with their CTO or CFO. By providing an authoritative framework that combines DORA, SPACE, and DevEx, we hope that more leaders will enter conversations with a clear, confident understanding of how engineering is performing and what exactly needs to be improved.
That’s it for this week. If you have questions or thoughts about the framework, please reach out to me on LinkedIn.
-Abi
I've also been struggling with knowing what to measure from all these frameworks. Combining DORA, SPACE, and DevEx looks the way to go. Thank you, Abi and team!