As product managers, we’re obsessed with the end-user, and for good reason. We build personas, map user journeys, and live by user feedback. But what if one of your most critical user personas is the developer building the product?
There’s a growing conversation around Developer Experience (DevEx) shifting from a ‘nice-to-have’ engineering concern to a core product management responsibility. A clunky, inefficient development environment—slow CI/CD pipelines, poor documentation, legacy tooling—directly impacts your ability to ship value. It’s a tax on every feature you build, leading to slower velocity, more bugs, and a frustrated team that can’t innovate.
Treating your developer platform as a product, with engineers as your users, is a powerful mental model. It means prioritizing improvements to the development lifecycle with the same rigor you apply to customer-facing features. This isn’t about ‘internal chores’; it’s about building a high-leverage foundation that enables speed and quality. Ignoring DevEx is like building a sports car but forcing your pit crew to work with rusty tools.