What is Developer Engagement?

Howdy, Upstarts!

Building a startup is an incredible amount of work! Startup founders are strapped for cash at all times, so building a successful startup takes sacrifice from every member of your team! This is such a well-known problem that it is almost impossible to walk through the business section of your local bookstore without finding 20 books on the Lean Startup, each stuffed to the brim with tips on building MVPs, raising your round, and closing deals! All of this advice is great, but some very important opportunities are often ignored.

I want to discuss an important aspect of Corporate Culture that every startup leader needs to understand and master if they want to lead their lean startup to success! It is something that I know to be crucial for surviving the early stages of your startup’s life and it’s something that I have seen so many founders ignore!

I am talking about something that I like to call Developer Engagement!

So in this article, I am going to talk about what Developer Engagement is and why every startup leader should care about it!

What is Developer Engagement?

Developer Engagement is the emotional connection that your software developers have with your technology product.

I have stolen the word engagement from my friends in the marketing department, and I use the word for a very specific reason. In online advertising, engagement is intended as the tool through which advertisers entice users to connect to their brand. Similar to this, I have co-opted this term to apply it to engineering organizations. So similar to the word engagement for marketers, I use Developer Engagement to measure and manage an emotional connection between my software developers and my technology products.

By leveraging Developer Engagement, you will be able to super-charge your startup and drastically increase your chances of success in a highly competitive landscape!

Why Do You Need to Care About Developer Engagement?

Building a startup is hard. It is going to take sacrifice and you are going to need every member of your team to step-up in many unexpected ways!

By increasing your Developer Engagement you will transform your developers from staff into partners whom you can rely on when the going gets tough!

Most people would not go too far out of their way to help a stranger. A Boy Scout is taught the virtues of helping a little old lady across the street, but even the most virtuous of Boy Scouts aren’t expected to provide that little old lady a blood transfusion. But, most people would donate a pint of blood for their own grandmother. There is a different level of connection between a boy and a stranger and a boy and his grandmother!

Emotional connections matter!

If we apply that same logic to your startup, if you create a strong bond, a strong emotional connection, with your software development team, then you will be able to ask much more of them during the hard times that will inevitably face you and your startup!

Developer Engagement is the best tool for creating and managing that emotional connection!

Developer Engagement is an Asset!

I am going to tell you a story... Actually, I am going to tell you two stories!

My first story is about a CEO, James. James was about to close a funding round but was facing a few hang-ups in the process, and it appeared that although the funding would come through, the check would not clear before his next payroll. Although James had closed some deals, he had neglected his staff and his development teams, so his startup’s Developer Engagement was very low. Having exhausted many of his financing options, the only way for James to keep his team together was for him to take a mortgage out on his house, putting his family home on the line!

My second story is about another CEO, Tanya. Tanya was also about to close a funding round and found herself in the same situation as James. But unlike James, Tanya had built a high Developer Engagement within her engineering organization. So Tanya implemented a different tactic: she simply told her developers that payroll would be a week late. Because her developers had such a strong emotional connection with Tanya and her startup, her developers rallied around their CEO, they closed their round, and everyone got paid eventually!

Unlike James, who needed to leverage himself and his family, Tanya could leverage the goodwill that she had cultivated within her engineering organization! Tanya treated Developer Engagement like a strategic asset; and when the time came, Tanya was able to use it to keep her team together and her startup alive!

A Good Leader Uses Every Tool Available

Developer Engagement is an important part of building a healthy Corporate Culture!

If you care about your team, then your team will care about you!

A good leader is someone who nurtures a relationship between their team and their startup; and, Developer Engagement is a good way to conceptualize, measure, and grow this relationship!

Although both CEOs kept their companies together, it was obviously quite a bit smoother for Tanya than it was for James, but in the world of startups, every little advantage could be the difference between life and death!

In this article, I have explained that Developer Engagement is an important asset, why it is important to cultivate Developer Engagement, and how Developer Engagement can help your startup to weather crises!

Good Leaders use every resource and tool available to them, and Developer Engagement is an important tool when building your startup!

I hope this article has given you a good understanding of Developer Engagement.

In my next article, I will be talking about ways that you can measure Developer Engagement at your own startup!