In general terms, marketing mission within Developer Relations is to show how attractive a specific software project is and get developers motivated and engaged. However, how can a DevRel prove to the company that the investment is worthwhile? How can we show the real value that comes from their teams? Are marketing tools providing enough data? Software development analytics is the next step to answer these questions. DevRel actions are made for a specific goal: Get more and more developers to either use or contribute to a specific project. Forums, site documentation, GitHub... There are several touch-points where developer community interact with the project before and while using it. Thus, being able to get evidence about the activity of these data sources and get aggregated information within a same platform seems to be crucial to better analyze community health

1. Why DevRel should care about software
development metrics
Ana Jiménez Santamaría
Marketing at Bitergia
@anajsana95
anajs@bitergia.com
DevRel Tokyo 2019

2. DevRel need to show how attractive a specific software project is and
keep developers motivated, engaged and get more and more
developers to either use or contribute to their software project.
Motivation

3. Motivation
Developer Community is different from other communities, and the
way they interact with the product involves a wide variety of touch
points

4. Motivation
Every community member follows a different “engagement journey”.
Do we know how our developer community behaves within our
marketing funnel?

5. DevRel Core
competencies
The Developer Relations cycle. Image source from Reto Meier’s post: The
Core Competencies of Developer Relations

6. Marketing funnel
Discovery
Consideration
Conversion
Retention
Web site, meetup,
social media, etc
Forums,collaboration
hubs, chats, docs
Emails, collaboration
hubs, forums, chats
Docs, forums, emails,
chats, collaboration hubs
How does each
community member
behave within our
marketing funnel?

7. Touch Points
Tickets/Issues
GitHub
GitLab
Bugzilla
Jira
Code Review
Gerrit
GitHub
GitLab
Meetings/Events
Meetup
Eventbrite
Website
Chats
Slack
Mattermost
Telegram
Social Media
Twitter
Mailing lists
Groups.io
Google Groups
Q&A Forums
Askbot
StackOverflow
Discourse
Collect feedback from
community
How developers interact
with your product?
Documentation
Read the docs
Confluence
MediaWiki

8. “To measure is to know”
“If you can not measure it,
you cannot improve it”
Lord Kelvin

9. Does a DevRel have a specific
place to collect feedback from
the community?
Can we get evidence about
these data sources and get
aggregated information within
a consistent platform?
The real value from
Community
Analyzing Community Health

10. Why Software Development
Analytics?
Activity Community
Who’s leading my software
project?
How many core, regular and
casual developers are in my
community?
What developers come from
outside the company?
Which company do they work
for?
Performance
Are we being efficient?
Is product development getting done as
expected?
Are there any bottlenecks within the
software development process?
Where are my contributors?
What external projects are they
contributing at?
Is my community growing?

11. Which is my developer “engagement journey”?:
Developer activity lifecycle
Visualizing
aggregated
information

12. Who’s leading my software project? Which core developers came from
outside the company?
Visualizing
aggregated
information

13. Is my product development getting done as expected? Are there any
bottlenecks within the software development process?
Visualizing
aggregated
information

14. DevRel tend to focus more on measuring awareness, based on social
media, website, events and mailing lists. It might be because that’s what
typically marketing analytics tools measure, and there is easy access to
mature and well-known marketing tools
Conclusions
More than marketing
analytics tools

15. DevRel tend to focus more on measuring awareness, based on social
media, website, events and mailing lists. It might be because that’s what
typically marketing analytics tools measure, and there is easy access to
mature and well-known marketing tools
Conclusions
DevRel should get evidence about all the different data sources
Developer Community interacts with, in order to have an overall view
about the community health
More than marketing
analytics tools
Limited analysis
means limited facts

16. DevRel tend to focus more on measuring awareness, based on social
media, website, events and mailing lists. It might be because that’s what
typically marketing analytics tools measure, and there is easy access to
mature and well-known marketing tools
Conclusions
DevRel should get evidence about all the different data sources
Developer Community interacts with, in order to have an overall view
about the community health
Looking for Insights among the different touch points (SM, mailing
lists, collaborations hubs, chats, forums, etc) is exhausting and time
consuming. Being able to visualize aggregated information within a
consistent platform might be a good solution to overcome this
problem
More than marketing
analytics tools
Limited analysis
means limited facts
All-in-one platform for
better Insight analysis

17. Ana Jiménez Santamaría
Marketing at Bitergia
anajs@bitergia.com
Thank you!