DX Maturity Levels

Many software organizations recognize the importance of DX and have started actively planning for it. A DX maturity model can help you understand where you are in your DX journey. It can also help you gauge how you measure up against a competitor.

Based on where they are in their DX journey, every developer tool/service company could have achieved one of the following levels of DX maturity.

Suffering because of bad DX

This refers to tools and services not taking off because of bad DX. It can be characterized by low usage, low adoption, and negative feedback on developer forums. If a company has not actively thought of DX or pursued the DX mindset, it could be suffering because of bad DX.

Understanding DX

This refers to teams or product managers who have realized the importance of DX and are trying to implement it within their organization to reduce the impact of bad DX. It will typically involve product managers trying to understand DX and the principles and methods required to implement it.

Applying DX

This is where a company starts applying DX principles to their developer tools. It is an exciting phase where organizations start tracking their developers' journeys, map them out, identify developer needs and desires, identify issues in existing offerings, and find ways to include features to satisfy these needs in their products.

Pioneering DX

This is where teams start sharing DX insights on behalf of developers with others by generating content, gathering insights, and creating communities. This could reach a point where the company is known for something outstanding that they did with regard to DX. For example, Stripe/Airtable became known for their contextual documentation. (Stripe docs insert your API key for easy copy-paste).