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Best Practices for Developer Relations

When building any large-scale product that provisions software access (via APIsand SDKs) invariably !uestions about how to support developers arise" #ostlarge-scale software develop$ent pro%ects re!uire so$e for$ of for$al developer 

support so it&s not surprising we&re seeing the establish$ent and growth of well-thought-out developer relations progra$s" 'enerally speaing it&s wise to planfor developer support with a developer relations progra$ fro$ the start includedin the product $anage$ent and $areting plan"

So how is product $anage$ent and developer support interrelated In a veryblac * white nutshell a well-$anaged product should support strong inbound$areting and developer relations should initially be built up via outbound$areting" +f course this should enhance the inbound cycle with solutionsflowing in fro$ developers - i$pacting the product in a positive (and inbound)way"

,his is a bit overly si$plistic but I thin it helps fra$e the discussion for how to$ai$i.e developer relations& success with the goal of shaping shipping and$anaging a successful product (for ea$ple be it an API a co$plete SDK orperhaps even a ga$e engine * editor)"

It&s i$portant to note that $ost $anagers involved with developer relations forsoftware products hold a fir$ belief that anyone hired to wor with developers onbehalf of the co$pany need to be as silled (or al$ost as technical) as thosevery developers" ,his author holds a slightly different view thans to herfortuitous eperience of woring with both sales engineers and technical

$areting support fols in both software and hardware fir$s" Support fro$ greatsales engineers and ecellent technical $areting people are as i$portant todevelopers& success with your product as your developer relations outreachefforts"

/ere at '01 through our analysis wor we have not seen $uch in the way offor$al processes in place around gathering custo$er infor$ation andre!uire$ents fro$ developer relations engineers but we have seen plenty ofprocess and even wored with so$e aweso$e applications for $anaginginbound leads as well as outbound $areting practices - $any of which wereinspired by developers using the product" ,hus it $ay be worthwhile to apply

so$e of the $areting industry2s best practices to engineering product$anage$ent and good ole2 fashioned developer relations"

 A een awareness and repurposing of the various tactics techni!ues and toolsfro$ the $areting technology3auto$ation industry can help provide a fra$eworfor successfully $anaging the developer relations& process in such a way that iteffectively opti$i.es product" 0ut first let2s tae a loo at so$e ey si$ilaritiesand differences between the two fields4 $areting and developer relations"

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5stablishing trust between co$pany and partner3custo$er is first and fore$ostfor both" In any relationship be it born of a $areting outreach progra$ or adhoc developer-to-developer relationship one $ust first establish trust"

,here is a great post on 6uora based on the writings of 7trust epert8 9harles /"

'reen who describes the : ingredients of ,rust in (Understanding The TrustEquation)" /ere&s the conclusion but we suggest reading the afore$entioned6uora post if inclined as the co$$ents are also noteworthy"

Conclusion: Reducing perception of Self-Orientation is the greatestlever to increase trust in relationships.  Ask more questions. Listen. Don't

 fill silences. Let the other person feel  that their point of view, their feelings, their presence here are as important than your own.  9harles 'reen also has a prettycool infographics on trust on his blog"

5stablishing a sense of trust and actually being trust-worthy are essential for anybusiness to succeed but see$ particularly i$portant in the sales and developerrelation&s role" Perhaps this is why $areting and $areters often get a bad rapfro$ engineers4 they are %ust too far away fro$ actual custo$ers and thereforethe trust variable $ay not factor in as seriously as in developer relations orbusiness develop$ent" In fact it&s possible to find $any fols in businessdevelop$ent with strong technical bacgrounds tae on the role of developerrelations as well especially in start-ups and s$aller co$panies"

+ay now that we&ve gotten trust taen care of ; which $ay be the $ost obviousoutlier that differentiates $areting progra$s fro$ developer relations progra$slet&s tae a loo at what they really have in co$$on"

Key tenets both #areting and Developer 1elations share4

• +pportunity to share your vision with the co$$unity that you thin will

either entice the$ heartily to engage with your product and3or solve their

proble$s

• Proactively listening to what the co$$unity needs and filling developer

needs with concrete help and support via any conduit possible

• Providing an easy to find easy to use conduit for developers to offer you

feedbac e"g" using social $edia&s ability to bring $aret feedbac bac

into the $other ship

•  Analytics tools to $easure outreach and feedbac success"

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+ay now with these hopefully useful parallels let&s tae a loo at so$e of thebetter-nown developer relations progra$s out there today fro$ the lies of

 A$a.on Apple 'oogle and #icrosoft %ust to see how they shape up in ter$s of7best practices"8

I&ll start with 'oogle&s Scalable Developer Advocacy progra$4

=ro$ 'oogle&s 1eto #eier on 6uora4 https433www"!uora"co$3What-is-the-Scalable-Developer-Advocacy-tea$-in-'oogle-Developer-1elations4

 Scalable Developer Advocacy is part of the Developer elations team !whose role is to be the interface between developers and "oogle#s developerofferings.

 $ore specifically, Developer Advocates on the Scalable Developer Advocacyteam are engineers who operate at scale to inspire and teach developers

about "oogle#s developer platforms, ecosystems, and A%&s.

hey are responsible for crafting a narrative based on developer and product needs and priorities( creating engaging, discoverable, and usefuldeveloper content )including training, videos, blog posts, social  media, websites, and  conference appearances *( and delivering and distributing thatcontent at scale to as many developers as possible.

he team also receives and analy+es feedback from the developercommunity, and advocates on behalf of developers with "oogle#s productand engineering teams to adapt and improve the underlying platforms and

 A%&s.

'oogle&s 7content tsuna$i8 pretty $uch su$s up 'oogle&s perspective ondeveloper outreach which while aweso$e in $any ways and certainly usefulwhen searching for specific content help $ay be a bit overwhel$ing to so$e",hat said a few years bac this author was very happy to have the 9hro$edaily builds and plenty of blog posts about their new Web'> support aroundwhen testing so$e Web'> code"

 As 'oogle is well nown for holding the bar of rigorous technical hiring standardsvery high it&s probably safe to assu$e the content and support co$ing out of

'oogle is best-in-class" >ast ?une 1eto #eier also wrote a great post 7 TheCore Competencies of Developer Relations”  on this very sub%ect" /e says4 “ … athriving developer ecosystem needs a trusted Developer Relations team made upof engineers ho are the interface !eteen "rd party developers and theengineering and product teams !uilding the underlying platforms.8 ,hisperspective will surely enable eperienced developers on their platfor$s but it$ay be a bit inti$idating to developers %ust getting started on their software andplatfor$s"

http://www.udacity.com/googlehttp://www.youtube.com/googledevelopershttp://googledevelopers.blogspot.com/http://www.twitter.com/googledevshttp://plus.google.com/+GoogleDevelopershttp://plus.google.com/+GoogleDevelopershttps://developers.google.com/web/fundamentals/https://developers.google.com/web/fundamentals/https://developers.google.com/web/fundamentals/http://lanyrd.com/profile/igrigorik/http://lanyrd.com/profile/igrigorik/https://medium.com/google-developers/the-core-competencies-of-developer-relations-f3e1c04c0f5b#.df1saekrvhttps://medium.com/google-developers/the-core-competencies-of-developer-relations-f3e1c04c0f5b#.df1saekrvhttps://medium.com/google-developers/the-core-competencies-of-developer-relations-f3e1c04c0f5b#.df1saekrvhttp://www.udacity.com/googlehttp://www.youtube.com/googledevelopershttp://googledevelopers.blogspot.com/http://www.twitter.com/googledevshttp://plus.google.com/+GoogleDevelopershttps://developers.google.com/web/fundamentals/https://developers.google.com/web/fundamentals/http://lanyrd.com/profile/igrigorik/https://medium.com/google-developers/the-core-competencies-of-developer-relations-f3e1c04c0f5b#.df1saekrvhttps://medium.com/google-developers/the-core-competencies-of-developer-relations-f3e1c04c0f5b#.df1saekrvhttps://medium.com/google-developers/the-core-competencies-of-developer-relations-f3e1c04c0f5b#.df1saekrv

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In any case finding #icrosoft developer support and infor$ation is not hard andprobably useful enough thans to #icrosoft supporting developers for decadesas well as being fairly ubi!uitous in the software industry but it&s not so$ethingI&d want to $odel a new Cst century developer support progra$ on"

>ast but far fro$ least is A$a.on&s developer relations and outreach found athttps433developer"a$a.on"co$3public3solutions  and fro$ where I cliced on7'etting Started8 shown in the screen shot below"

 A$a.on does a great %ob seg$enting support portals for their various $aretsincluding platfor$s (e"g" P93#ac i+S their own Android +S based =ire/,#>E even ga$e engines such as Fnity) devices (e"g" =ire ,B) to services

(e"g" Alea)" 0eyond that but !uicly findable fro$ their developer ho$e pageit&s easy to find resources such as API help resources and $ore support" 5tracredit for their =lipboard style ho$e page4

https://developer.amazon.com/public/solutionshttps://developer.amazon.com/public/solutions

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0ut what about that fra$ewor discussed earlier that taes advantage of$areting technology to support best practices for developer relations

,here is not $uch on the internet in the way of research on how to best $anageyour developer relations progra$ but this data focused article $ay be helpful(fro$ the >ondon based agency #etia)" ,heir report shows %ust how solitary isthe wor of a developer how fre!uently they do the $a%ority of their wor fro$ho$e and how reluctant they can be to engage off-line and if they do it&sgenerally for ey conferences and off-site training to enhance their learning" Ihave found this to be true in the ga$e develop$ent world in particular"

So$e of the $areting industry2s best tools can be put to effective use in thedeveloper relations discipline if these progra$s can be repurposed to bring

together connections and content to support your (developer custo$ers&) codedevelop$ent process"

,hans to the enterprise cloud co$puting era we find ourselves in now $any ofthese 7$areting tech8 SaaS tools provide the perfect test bed for in-house$anage$ent of developer relations best practices" If an organi.ation approaches$anage$ent of developer outreach and relations si$ilarly to how it $anagesproduct launches this $ay enhance the developer&s eperience with thesupporting co$pany as long as there is no resulting $areting-lie overhead tothe developer"

What ind of tools can help

91# tools are of course now ubi!uitous but 91# is

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based applications such as Salesforce being nearly ubi!uitous for businessdevelop$ent professionals applications such as 'ithub 0ug.illa Slac ,rello?enins etc" are where developers turn to for code access and $aintenancebug-filing and tracing co$$unication build support and twitter Stac+verflow1eddit >inedIn etc" for co$$unity education and help" Hou $ight even

consider adding one or two good pro%ect or product $anage$ent tools to the $itoo if that $aes sense" A nicely curated product $anage$ent tools list can befound on Product /unt but this 6uora post has a $ore co$prehensive list@ stillwe found no applications specifically targeted at $anaging developer relations"

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ga$ing or so$e ind of alternate or $ied reality space (e"g" A13B1) all ofwhich co$e with APIs3SDKs3ADKs and toolits to access or enhance end users&eperience with the core product offering" #etia $entioned earlier in this articleposted a blog on Benture 0eat a while bac that $aes a lot of sense4 “Software9#+s $eet your toughest custo$er4 developers"8 0eyond docu$enting so$e of 

the obvious ways developers are $ore discerning fro$ other non-engineeringconsu$ers perhaps the best taeaway here is the fact that co$panies $areting

to software developers need to be “… prepared for their enterprise-class

expectations in terms of ease of use, documentation, service levels, and

reliability.”

Think of it this way: assume the software developer has a need to absorb your

true value-add in a faster, more coherent way than what any traditional marketing

campaign can deliver, delivered in a way that is counter-intuitive to the usual

hype, rhetoric, or splash of a traditional marketing campaign. Work with actual

developers both in house, and outside, to craft your messaging and deliverables.

As the Metia blog post says,“The resources most highly valued by developers

originated from product teams, including documentation, critical updates, SDK,

sandbox, and test tools. The least valued — loyalty programs, vendor news, and

 product brochures — typically originate from marketing.”

'et developers what they need when they need it@ use $areting tools to helpdeliver and $anage your efforts but leave those fancy go-to-$aret plans for the

actual consu$er end-user products"

http://venturebeat.com/2014/12/02/software-cmos-meet-your-toughest-customer-developers/http://venturebeat.com/2014/12/02/software-cmos-meet-your-toughest-customer-developers/http://venturebeat.com/2014/12/02/software-cmos-meet-your-toughest-customer-developers/http://venturebeat.com/2014/12/02/software-cmos-meet-your-toughest-customer-developers/