Marshall Guillory, CTO, Agile Rising. July 18, 2024
I discovered some interesting perspectives in the Atlassian State of Developer Experience Report for 2024. As a recovering software developer I try to stay connected to my coding roots through my professional life journey from developer, product and solution designer and architect, manager, leader, mentor, consultant, and coach. I was intrigued by the title of the report.

What I find most interesting about the report is that nothing has changed since 1995 when I started designing and building software products. My anticipation before reading was that there would be some new insights from the report for high-productivity through the Agile, ‘AI’, ML, and tools age.
To my surprise, all of the findings are much the same things myself and teams were reporting 29 years ago. I feel old writing that sentence.
Developers and leaders know developer experience is critical to attracting and retaining talent.
Developer experience in 2024: the highlights
Take the quote above for example as a good summary of the reports findings. The new catchy “DevEx” phrase is a pure marketing ploy. Developers do not care for marketing. Or ploys. All that this phrase means is what developers and leaders in IT and software have been saying for decades going back to the what began the information age in the mid-20th century. Nothing new here to see and no bridges built.
When I was running high-performing, award winning software teams in the early 2000’s we did it through a great experience at work. I made a lot of mistakes back then as a young manager. But I improved relentlessly. I figured it out, learned the path to leadership, and created winning teams, lifelong friends, and fond and not so glorious memories. We used words like culture, freedom, innovation, working smart, hard, and my favorite, “get ‘shift’ done.” So, DevEx. Sure.
Same old story, new words
Let’s get back to the topic at hand. How can managers and leaders create the environment for innovation, freedom of action, movement, and innovation in 2024?

Scaled Agile Framework 6.0
Good news, you don’t have to invent anything. The solutions have existed for a long time and have been curated and produced into a world-class framework and body of knowledge known as the Scaled Agile Framework for Lean Enterprises.
Developers thrive on joy and conquering the problem space. We love to see happy users using our stuff. When we handcuff developers (all professionals, really) with ridged, excessive and wasteful processes, procedures, phase gates, task master lists, and compliance it takes all of the joy out of the experience. I am not suggesting chaos and anarchy. But we can surely do better to create an environment for thinking, and more time and space for innovation and focus work.
This leads us to our Top 5 Reasons SAFe Enhances DevEx. How can you solve these DevEx challenges in your organization? Using SAFe as guidance your organization can blueprint a new operating model and operating system that drives better business and mission outcomes.
Are you ready to lead change?

From the report:
“To understand the perspectives of both engineering leaders and developers, we ran two global surveys:
? Wakefield Research surveyed 1,250 engineering leaders in the US, Germany, France, and Australia.
? DX surveyed 900 developers around the world, including the US, Germany, France, and Australia.*
*DX also surveyed developers in the UK, Sweden, Lithuania, Estonia, Spain, Ireland, Ukraine, Denmark, Switzerland, the Czech Republic,
Canada, Brazil, and India.”
References:
Atlassian, State of Developer Experience Report 2024, https://www.atlassian.com/software/compass/resources/state-of-developer-2024
L David Marquet. Turn Your Ship around : A Workbook for Implementing Intent-Based Leadership in Your Organization. New York, Portfolio / Penguin, 2015.