If you can't measure it, you can't improve it. - Peter Drucker (managment Guru)
Developer Relations, also known as DevRel, is an umbrella term covering the strategies and tactics for building and nurturing a community of mutually beneficial relationships between organizations and developers (e.g., software developers) as the primary users, and often influencers on purchases, of a product.
Metrics are object things we can measure.
A lot of developer relations teams have a lot of metrics for measuring success but no one (to the best of my knowledge) has come to an agreement on which metric is most Important. However, In their quest to outperform the options available to developers when selecting a technology, many software companies place a high priority on their relationships with developers. Developer advocacy or community outreach are two names you may give it. But in the end, it's a gesture intended to make sure of the following:
- They are actively assessing how they can best meet the needs of the developer community.
- They enable developers to provide them feedback by serving as a means.
- Opportunity to share their thoughts with developers and even assist with some of their challenges.
A lot of developer metrics are quantitative. However, DevRel teams are trained to use success measures in the pursuit of the above mentioned objectives. These are quantifiable statistics that are used to gauge and evaluate the effectiveness of a company’s operations. Effective metrics are actionable, measurable, and encourage successful behavior, however they may vary with each company. It depends on what the company you work for is actually looking for.
List of Metrics
ROI and ROAS
The ratio of income to investment is known as return on investment (ROI). Return on investment (ROI) is a performance measure used to evaluate the efficiency or profitability of an investment or compare the efficiency of a number of different investments. ROI tries to directly measure the amount of return on a particular investment, relative to the investment’s cost. To calculate ROI, the benefit (or return) of an investment is divided by the cost of the investment. The result is expressed as a percentage or a ratio. Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) is a marketing metric that measures revenue earned for each dollar you spend on advertising. By calculating and tracking ROAS, you gain insights on the effectiveness of your advertising. You can calculate ROAS for a wide variety of advertising initiatives, from measuring ROAS on single ads or projects, to calculating ROAS on monthly campaigns or for an entire year’s worth of advertising spend.
Some Challenges DevRels Face in Calculating ROI
- Uncountable payback cycles exist - Payback period is the length of time it takes to recover the cost of an investment or the length of time an investor needs to reach a breakeven point.
There isn't a standardized technique for determining what counts as a marketing cost.
Some marketing campaigns don't always translate into increased sales.
Biggest challenge that marketers encounter the most when assessing ROI is linking marketing DevRel activity to particular earnings made.
Leads ≥ Customers (Conversions)
Customers are typically the easiest way to tell whether a firm is successful. Many firms benefit from the analytical information provided by measuring customer experience as a key performance indicator (KPI) over the long term, and they heavily rely on the data relating to brand-customer relationships to identify patterns and create long-term strategies. The growing emphasis on the customer experience has led to an increase in metrics that assess these connections from various perspectives. Net Promoter Score (NPS) is one of the most widely used metrics for assessing customer satisfaction and loyalty. The likelihood that customers will suggest your company to others is measured by the NPS. To get a sense of how customers feel about your product, it is often monitored through customer feedback.
DevRel metrics are centered around product metrics - which includes size, complexity, design features, performance, and level of quality of products, process metrics - used to streamline software development and maintenance, for example decreasing the rate of errors in the software, testing for defect and time it takes for a fixed action to finish; product metrics - used to describe a project’s characteristics and progress.
Quality Controls
Qualitative metrics are data points that cannot be mathematically measured. As a result, as businesses expand and become more data-driven, it can be challenging to maintain trust in qualitative indications. As an example of a qualitative metric, consider the following:
Response to survey feedback
Interactions on social media
Statements made directly by developers
On the other hand, Quantitative metrics are data points with numerical measurable elements such as:
Monthly active users (products, platforms).
Good content (Average time on page, average watch time for videos).
The sharing of content (themes, percentage of content convering specific topics)
Awareness
Determining the degree of a product's awareness can be challenging. But conducting surveys to discover who has heard of the business or product that they are supplying may be the simplest way to confirm the awareness level. The best metrics of the DevRel is demonstrated by an increase in awareness. It's important to take into account the intention of the developer ties between your community and the IT businesses.. Word of mouth is still considered to be one of the best ways; it may take longer than other approaches, but it also fosters trust. The frequency with which a firm is mentioned in blog posts, articles, sponsorships, and even during webinars or other speaking occasions can all be used to gauge recognition. The beautiful thing about this assessment area is that it allows for the tracking of social media reactions, increased traffic, views, time spent on particular sites, and even the number of emails opened in order to determine success. In essence, you may use typical Google Analytics tools to track Devrel's success.
Relationships
The Developer Relations has the word 'relations', they have the number one task of building trust. Building trust with Developers is also their key job and it can be measured by active community members, evangelists, how much time did developers spend on their product through community activities, etc. The ability to measure this KPI is actually fairly simple. The amount of interactions between the two parties can be counted by the developer. Additionally, they may track changes in the volume of visitors to their website, the number of social media likes, and even how long visitors stay on particular pages. It's simple to see how many people are interested in your goals when the pages are directly related to software developments.
The goal of developer relations is to ensure that your product is seen by the developers who will actually want to use it. For instance, they can introduce a new plugin or integration that makes their product simpler to use. The DevRel team works to design methods to assist developers in implementing your APIs and SDKs, as well as integrating them into their web or mobile applications to enhance the user experience for their users. Some developer relations initiatives revert to marketing metrics like page views and sign-ups because the value created might be difficult to quantify, this however leads to single sided love where the company spends more and more money to attract developers’ attention but does not give importance on retention or improving the product and engagement. In simple words, the addition of a new user doesn't always imply the generation of value.
Takeaway
Metrics are key for helping business leaders understand the critical role that developer relations plays. For each activity you participate in or engage in, there should be a metrics account. Any new program needs the right measurements to support the accomplishment of its objectives. A system with a feedback loop will always keep on improving when it focuses on quality over quantity. DevRel is about creating quality and very much more than mass outreach.
Note: This post was written as part of my DX mentorship.
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