As PMs, we’re obsessed with metrics that face the customer: NPS, DAU, churn, and conversion rates. But what about the experience of the people actually building the product? I’m talking about Developer Experience (DevEx).
For too long, we’ve treated our engineering teams as a black box where roadmaps go in and features come out. The reality is that a poor DevEx—full of friction, legacy tooling, slow builds, and confusing processes—directly torpedoes our ability to ship value. It leads to burnout, slower cycle times, and an inability to attract top talent. In essence, your internal platform is a product, and your developers are its users.
Thinking like this requires a mindset shift. We need to apply our product skills internally. Are we conducting user research with our engineers to understand their pain points? Are we creating a seamless ‘user journey’ for shipping code? Getting a clear, data-driven view of your development pipeline is the first step. Tools that integrate with systems like Jira, like leera.io, can help surface the friction points that are hurting your team’s DevEx and, ultimately, your roadmap execution. A great DevEx isn’t a ‘nice-to-have’; it’s a competitive advantage that enables speed and quality.
How are you measuring and prioritizing Developer Experience in your organization, or is it still an overlooked part of your product strategy?