Engineering Enablement
Engineering Enablement Podcast
The science behind DORA
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The science behind DORA

Lead researcher on Google's DORA team, Derek Debellis, takes us through DORA's research process.

In this week's episode, we welcome Derek DeBellis, lead researcher on Google's DORA team, for a deep dive into the science and methodology behind DORA's research. We explore Derek's background, his role at Google, and how DORA intersects with other research disciplines. Derek takes us through DORA's research process step by step, from defining outcomes and factors to survey design, analysis, and structural equation modeling.

Listen to this podcast on Spotify, Google, or Apple Podcasts.

Discussion points:

  • (3:00) Derek’s transition from Microsoft to the DORA team at Google

  • (4:28) Derek talks about his connection to surveys

  • (6:16) Derek’s journey to becoming a Quantitative User Experience Researcher

  • (7:48) Derek simplifies DORA

  • (8:19) DORA - philosophy vs practice

  • (11:09) Understanding desired outcomes

  • (12:45) Self reported outcomes vs objective outcomes

  • (16:16) Derek and Abi discuss the nuances of literature review

  • (19:57) Derek details survey development

  • (27:55) Pre-testing issues

  • (29:30) Designing surveys for other companies

  • (35:02) Derek simplifies model analysis and validation techniques

  • (38:48) Benchmarks: Balancing data limitations with method sensitivity

Read the full transcript here.

Discussion about this podcast

Engineering Enablement
Engineering Enablement Podcast
A weekly podcast on measuring and improving developer productivity.