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Friction Logging and
Internal Advocacy
Emma Haruka Iwao (@Yuryu)
Developer Advocate, Google Cloud
2020-11-14

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What does DevRel do?

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We are developers, too!
DevRel is often part of engineering orgs
DevRel as Developers

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● DevRel is about drive developers' success
● One way is external outreach
○ Spread the news!
● The other way is internal advocacy
○ Learn from external developers
○ Represent developers
DevRel is a two-way communication
Development Team
DevRel
External Developers
Internal advocacyProducts
FeedbackOutreach

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DevRel is an Internal Outsider
● Product teams know too much
○ Instinctively avoid bumps and pitfalls
● Products are often too big
○ Harder to keep consistency across the board
● DevRel represents external community
○ Programming languages
○ Special interests (DevOps, Machine Learning, etc…)

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We know developers the best
● Direct conversations
● Online forums
● Social media
● Community-specific
We also have a bird's-eye view
● Across multiple products
● Different companies, competitors
● Open-source communities
We can put products into context

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● Friction log is a tool to capture end-to-end
experience throughout developer journey
● Provides broader picture and context
● Based on real world scenarios
○ "How do I deploy my Rails Girls app to
Google App Engine?"
Friction Log

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Friction Log vs Bug
● Things work but are frustrating
● Based on external user scenarios
● New members do an excellent job
● Scenario oriented
● Multiple products
● Can't be automated
● Things don't work
● Based on specifications
● Experienced devs do an excellent job
● Component oriented
● One or a few products
● Can be automated (sometimes)
Friction Log Bugs

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A friction log should include
● A scenario based developer journey log
● Things to include:
○ Name, date
○ Use case
○ Product(s)
○ Environment (OS, languages)
○ Color-coded log
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1HVG3t-mgGZKU4iMeguTWGejbnQ54qUTXwdCFkA5xHG0/edit

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● $ git clone https://github.com/yuryu/example.git
● Installing prerequisites
○ $ sudo apt update; sudo apt install libnuma1-dev libncurses5-dev
● Now build the binaries
○ $ ./configure
○ Stopped with error
■ checking for library containing lzma_end... no
■ configure: error: liblzma not found, please install lzma
○ Okay, let's install lzma
○ $ sudo apt install liblzma-dev
○ $ ./configure
○ $ make; make install
○ Build succeeded with the default options!
● Now let's run the binary…
○ $ example
○ Segmentation fault
Example (clean environment)

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● Now let's try deploying this Rails application to this managed Kubernetes service…
○ $ kubectl apply -f deployment.yaml
○ $ kubectl get pods
■ NAME READY STATUS RESTARTS AGE
■ ruby-deployment-7fdb99cfd6-bbcxp 1/1 Running 0 39s
■ ruby-deployment-7fdb99cfd6-pm2x9 1/1 Running 0 42s
■ ruby-deployment-7fdb99cfd6-hdbbv 1/1 Running 0 42s
○ Seems good
● <snip>
● How can I run "rails db:migrate" ?
○ Googling "kubernetes rails db:migrate"
○ Okay, so we run tasks inside pods…
○ $ kubectl exec ruby-deployment-7fdb99cfd6-bbcxp -- bash -c 'cd ~/app &&
RAILS_ENV=production bin/rails db:migrate'
○ Succeeded!
● curl https://192.0.0.1/
○ Worked!
Example (Running Rails on Managed Kubernetes)

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Focus on experience
● If you need to do a lot of research before
making something work, that's a friction
● It's not just about fixing bugs
○ Write tutorials for a specific scenario
○ Improve documents
○ Develop a new helper library

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When to write friction logs
● Before launching a new feature
● You welcome a new team member
● You hear feedback at events, on social media…
○ "I just tried to do X but it didn't work" and you know the context
● Whenever you struggle with something
○ Creating demos, writing tutorials, preparing talks, etc...

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New members write better friction logs
● Friction logs are best written with
○ Technical expertise of a particular topic
○ Little to no insider knowledge
● New team members are closest to external
developers
● An excellent onboarding tool
○ Contributes to products
○ Leaves concrete artifacts
○ Gains product knowledge

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● Talk to product teams
● Share the log
● File bugs
● Help product teams reproduce bugs
● Write a blog post
● Submit a talk based on the experience
● Answer a Stack Overflow question
○ Post a question, too!
After writing a log

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Could be a mailing list, or a chat group
↓ Tensorflow
Designate a place to send logs to
https://github.com/tensorflow/community/blob/master/sigs/build/tensorflow-testing.md

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Friction log
Log to bugs
Bugs (action items)
● doc: Update prerequisites
● doc: Include package names for CentOS
● bug: Program crashes if LOCALE is set to…
● bug: liblzma should be optional
● bug: Add a command line options to…
● bug: Usage should include link to help
● feat: Support Zstandard algorithm
● …

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Few product teams have extra cycles
● PMs have own plans
● "Thank you, but we don't have time…"
Identify low hanging fruits. Examples:
● Simple UI change
● Documentation change
Quantify the impact
● This blog post has XX views
Help product teams prioritize
Proposal: Can we add this to the known issues page?
Proposal: --help should also show the help message

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Further reading
https://devrel.net/developer-experience/an-introduction-to-friction-logging

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DevRel means external outreach + internal advocacy
Friction logs are a tool to capture end-to-end user journey
When to write friction logs?
New feature, new team member, new question
What to include?
All little steps, color-coded according to emotion
What to do after writing?
Talk to product team, help them fix bugs
Create more content based on the experience!
Questions? - reach out to @Yuryu
Summary