Your business is focused on its customers (hopefully) but could internal developers be customers of a different sort?
I’ve been writing a lot this week asking thought-provoking questions. Today I want to prompt some action.
I’m currently helping an infrastructure team, at a large enterprise, shift their focus to think about internal developers/engineers as their customers.
As this team releases products, how do their customers (internal devs) consume their products?
How do their customers even know that they exist and are creating helpful tools?
What internal marketing are they doing, if any?
It may be strange to think that marketing is necessary inside their company.
You’ve heard it before – “build it and they will come.”
Unfortunately, this is the approach a lot of teams take, and it just doesn’t work.
How does the left hand ever learn about what the right hand is doing?
In large enterprises, communication is critical.
That’s no surprise.
Do your developers have a central place to get the necessary tools? The tools that cost a LOT of money to build and implement.
Here is the big actionable step:
I want to challenge you to put together a list of tools that are supplied internally to enable software development.
It doesn’t have to be a comprehensive list, just 5 or so tools you know devs use.
Search for those tools internally. Pretend you don’t know where they are, act like a new hire.
Were they easy to find? Did you have to reach out and ask someone? Were there good instructions on how to use those tools?
Faster discovery -> faster adoption -> faster results.
Hit REPLY and let me know how it went.
Best,
Andre