The hierarchy of developer needs
Mike Stowe takes a look at the Hierarchy of Developer Needs, and how you can use it to balance your efforts and ensure your users are successful.
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Mike Stowe takes a look at the Hierarchy of Developer Needs, and how you can use it to balance your efforts and ensure your users are successful.
Last updated
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Understanding the basic needs of developers
Understanding AIDA model
Digging deeper into company and developer needs.
Putting it together
Audit
Any hierarchy needs to be audited.
Plan
Understanding where in the funnel you need to focus
Are the funnels actually working and driving developers
How is the audit affecting the strategy
Measure
Applying metrics at each stage to measure success, blockers, tactics.
Focus
On needs of developers
Building a self-sustaining community
Helping developers become advocates and empower them
Guiding developers through the hierarchy or funnel without friction
Focusing on their psychological and self-fulfilment needs
Where & how do we focus our efforts and energy
How much money to build a strong program.
How do you actually build a developer relations program?
Should you be focused on the community?
Should you be focused on events?
Should you be focused on evangelism or education,
Should you be focused on open source?
What is it that makes a good developer relations program?
Where do you invest for maximum impact?
How do you grow and expand your program in a scalable manner?
How do you grow it without having to hire 40 developer evangelists on a daily basis?
How do you grow it without having to hire 10 community managers to try to manage your forums or your community?
How do you go a step further and take your developers and convert them into advocates?
Understand where you’re at today, and what steps you need to take to get to where you want to be tomorrow.
2 different frameworks for answering the above questions and how to measure them
This is the same tool Mike has used going from stealth startups to public companies
If you were asked to start a global meetup program, what would you need to do in order to accomplish that?”
The answer will differ for different people
For an established company like SalesForce,
A global meetup program is already there.
For a program like MuleSoft, where the community is built first,
Able to launch a meetup program with 40 meetups in about 12 months.
For a brand new startup
A global program is uncertain, starting with one meetup will be the key to find out if it is something they need.
Developer Relations is a symbiotic program designed to help both the developers and the company. At the same time, DevRel needs to be an advocate for the developers.
They need to make sure they’re putting the developer’s success first,
Helping the developers in everything that they do
Not just trying to sell them technology, but help them grow their careers
Bringing new technology to the developers,
Helping developers utilize, adopt the technology
Helping them evangelize the company’s tech.
Ultimately, you want them to be so happy with the technology that they’re talking about it to others - see the value in the technology that you see in the technology.
Your company has to be successful
Your developers have to be successful
Use the standard AIDA (Awareness, Interest, Desire, Action) model marketing funnel
DevRel is really responsible for the developer journey from raising awareness to all the way to adoption advocacy.
Awareness
Without awareness, developers can’t find the technology
They can’t learn about the technology or use it and certainly can’t advocate for it
Consideration (Interest), ie: “Okay, I’m interested. I’m thinking about using this.”
Giving them the tools to understand, like developer documentation, sandbox environment, etc.
Adoption (Desire)
Assist them through the adoption process of becoming a customer.
That may be,
Free APIs: Using the freemium model.
Paid APIs: Adopting the paid or premium model.
Advocacy (Action)
Taking the developer who’s using the technology
Change them from being someone who loves technology, to someone who’s willing to tell others about the technology.
Devs are people, they have basic needs
Basic needs fulfilled
survival
Psychological fulfilled
purpose
Ability to become self-fulfilled
happiness
Basic Needs
Basic Enablement
Documentation and onboarding -- without this, you are losing developers on the very first step of the process.
Community
Slacks, forums, social media to connect similar people sharing same the same process and so that they don't feel lost or alone.
Education
Making sure developers grow -- you don't want them to be stuck with your product, you should make them grow.
Self-fulfilment
Expanded Enablement
Online workshops and webinars, where they can watch and practice the product and various test cases.
In-person events
One of the main 🔑 elements in the whole process is to build a community of developers and who don't feel they are alone and want to grow.
If your program is not meeting the basic needs, it dosen't matter how great your other programs are.
Messaging
Is your website clear in conveying the message?
Your messaging should be clear enough and to-point for developers to understand what exactly your product does and brings to the table
Navigation
The website should be easy to navigate to areas that are always needed by the developers.
Account creation
Should be a low-step process.
Lesser the steps the better
Access to credentials
Access to documentation
Important step to achieve developer retention.
If a developer is interested in the product, they want to dive right in, there might be existing tutorials from 3rd part sources, but documentation from the organization to make the onboarding of devs easier is a must.
Usability and searchability
Getting started guides
Tutorials and examples
Error reporting
If a developer cannot create an account and build their first basic app with 5 minutes, your platform is too difficult to use.
A way for developers to obtain support, network with each other and be recognized by the organization.
Internal
Forum
Team messaging
MVP program/ambassadors
External
StackOverflow
Social Channels
GitHub
Making sure developers become experts in their field
Blogs
Videos
Podcasts
Open-source
Training programs
Taking education up a notch.
Webinars
White-papers
Case studies
Online workshops
Virtual events
Certification
Great way for creating connections with your developers, recognizing potential DevRel qualified leads and rewarding them. (Not sure about DevRel qualified leads? Here's a link that should help you out)
Meetups
Summits
Hackathons
Conferences