Advance your understanding of how software developers work, learn, and thrive with evidence-based research focused on developer satisfaction and success.
Our Mission
Reports
Evidence-Based Research to Improve Developer Success
Dive into the latest research on developer thriving, team culture, and developer productivity.
Healthy software metrics: How successful software teams measure their work
Developer Success Lab
Engineering leaders are facing pressure from board leadership to quantify engineering performance. This has led companies like Twitter and Salesforce to rely on severely flawed metrics such as lines of code written.
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Where We’re Going Wrong with Developer Productivity - LeadDev London 2023
Cat Hicks, PhD
Are you writing enough code, keeping up with the latest technology, or driving product progress? Developer productivity is a top priority for developers, engineering leaders, and businesses.
4 Tips Developers Can Use In Their Next Job Hunt + Example Interview Questions
Cat Hicks, PhD
We’ve studied what we can learn from how those teams succeed, and we’ve found that Developer Thriving includes four factors: Agency, Learning Culture, Motivation & Self-Efficacy, and Support & Belonging.
How Organizations can Measure Productivity to Drive Engineering Success
Cat Hicks, PhD, Carol Lee, PhD, Morgan Ramsey
We propose differentiating between measures of production, productivity, and performance as an important step for engineering organizations, and one that helps to suggest next steps for improving how we measure the success of engineering teams.
LeadDev Flashback: How Hackathons Increase Team Morale
Carol Lee, PhD
Carol Lee breaks down how hackathons can increase belonging, decrease anxiety and help people imagine new identities in tech at LeadDev in New York.
How Visibility Leads to Higher Performing Teams and Better Business Outcomes
Cat Hicks, PhD, Carol Lee, PhD, Morgan Ramsey
We dive more deeply into how visibility contributes to improved engagement, performance, and productivity from both individuals and team members.
How Successful Hackathons Can Increase Team Development
Carol Lee, PhD & Cat Hicks, PhD
Decades of psychological and behavioral science consistently show that it’s the intangible outcomes that not only drive the tangible outcomes, but also key long-term sociocognitive processes for employees such as motivation, performance, and productivity.
Quantity is for Production, Quality is for Performance
Carol Lee, PhD & Cat Hicks, PhD
Moving past misconceptions about how we define & measure productivity to unlock sustainable software team success.
Why engineering management needs an evidence science
Cat Hicks, PhD
You hear a lot about the outcomes and the frictions being felt by other teams, but you know that your job is to understand what’s really happening with this team.
Whitepaper: The Developer Thriving Framework
Cat Hicks, Carol Lee, Morgan Ramsey
Based on the latest research from the Developer Success Lab, this whitepaper will dive into how to foster a thriving environment for software developers.
Developer Thriving: the four factors that drive Software Developer Productivity across industries
Cat Hicks, Carol Lee, Morgan Ramsey
Read the first major research project from the Developer Success Lab: The four factors that drive software developer productivity across industries.
Measuring developer experience: The superpower of today
Cat Hicks
As a social scientist and Pluralsight’s VP of Research Insights, Cat Hicks examines how employees respond to their work environment, colleagues, managers, and other senior leaders.
How to give feedback for performance in tech
Cat Hicks
When it comes to the developer experience, how you give feedback is as important as the metrics you’re delivering.
Building long term developer success through positive experiences
Carol Lee
Research shows that there are two key factors that increase behavioral engagement, while boosting mental wellness: self-efficacy and value building.
Team
Meet the Developer Success Researchers
Cat Hicks, PhD
Social & Data Scientist
Cat Hicks is a social science leader in tech with expertise leading applied research teams to explore complex areas of human behavior, empirical intervention, and evidence science.
Cat is a research affiliate in STEM education research at UC San Diego and an advocate for increasing education access. She holds a Ph.D. in Quantitative Experimental Psychology from UC San Diego, was an inaugural Fellow in the UC San Diego Design Lab, and has led research at organizations such as Google and Khan Academy.
Carol Lee, PhD
Clinical Research Scientist
Carol Lee leverages her expertise in mental health and thoughtful measurement to study how developers cope and thrive through stressful circumstances. Carol has over a decade of experience leading academic and industry research in clinical health, measurement, and human behavior.
Carol serves as a research fellow at the Integrated Behavioral Health Research Institute and as a clinical science advisor for Bravely Mental Health. She holds a Ph.D. in clinical psychology from UMass Boston.
Morgan Ramsey
Design Research Scientist
Morgan Ramsey utilizes her background in ethnography, design and UX research to strategize solutions to complex problems. She specializes in developing design research strategies to elevate underrepresented users’ narratives and thereby build excellent products.
Morgan holds a B.A. in Public Policy from Duke University and an in-progress Masters in Design Methodology from Illinois Institute of Technology, Institute of Design.
Announcements
Events
Catch up on all the latest updates with the Developer Success Lab team.
Watch Cat Hicks, PhD and the Developer Success Lab researchers for the Developer Success Summit
The Developer Success Lab researchers have a conversation with engineering managers about common challenges and success stories in transforming the teams they manage.
Join Cat Hicks at LeadDev London on June 27th
How I learned to stop worrying about Developer Productivity and love Developer Thriving
Developer Success Summit Series: The four factors that drive Software Developer Productivity across industries
Cat Hicks, PhD and the Developer Success Lab researchers present their findings from the Developer Thriving: the four factors that drive Software Developer Productivity across industries study.
How to Thrive, Belong, and Lead in the Tech World
Cat Hicks, PhD presents a framework based on her team’s research on over 1,200 developers called Developer Thriving, which engineering leaders can use to create high-performing development teams that are happier and more collaborative.
