Developer Experience Survey (DevEx & DORA)

Measures development flow, friction points and the four DORA metrics via self-report – the basis for targeted engineering improvements.

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Developer Experience Survey (DevEx & DORA) – questionnaire preview

DORA research (DevOps Research and Assessment) showed that software delivery performance can be captured with four key metrics: deployment frequency, lead time, change failure rate and time to restore – and that the original research collects these via surveys, not tooling. This template combines exactly that with the newer DevEx approach: statements on flow, tooling, codebase and cognitive load show where friction arises, the four DORA questions provide benchmark anchors, and a friction ranking prioritises what your engineering team should tackle first. CI/CD telemetry can complement the picture later – developers' perception is the best starting point.

When should you use this template?

This template is a great fit for:

  • Semi-annually as an engineering pulse with trends across waves
  • Before investing in developer tooling or platform teams
  • After major process or architecture changes

Every question in this template

  1. 1

    Development flow in daily work

    How much do the following statements apply to your daily work?

    Matrix
    Strongly disagreeDisagreeNeutralAgreeStrongly agree
    I can work with focus without constant interruptions.
    My local development environment is fast and reliable.
    CI/CD gives me feedback on changes quickly enough.
    Our codebase is understandable and easy to change.
    Documentation and internal resources actually help me.
  2. 2

    How often does your team deploy to production?

    Single choice
    • Multiple times a day (on demand)
    • Between daily and weekly
    • Between weekly and monthly
    • Between monthly and every six months
    • Less often
  3. 3

    How long does it typically take from committed code to running in production?

    Single choice
    • Less than one hour
    • Less than one day
    • One day to one week
    • One week to one month
    • Longer than one month
  4. 4

    How many of your changes cause problems in production (hotfix or rollback needed)?

    Single choice
    • 0–15%
    • 16–30%
    • 31–45%
    • More than 45%
  5. 5

    How quickly is a production incident typically resolved?

    Single choice
    • In less than one hour
    • In less than one day
    • One day to one week
    • Longer than one week
  6. 6

    What creates the most friction in your daily work?

    Please rank the items – the biggest friction first.

    Ranking
    • 1Slow builds and CI pipelines
    • 2Flaky tests
    • 3Unclear requirements
    • 4Meetings and interruptions
    • 5Technical debt
    • 6Missing or outdated tooling
  7. 7

    Overall, how satisfied are you with your developer experience here?

    Rating
  8. 8

    If you could change one thing about our development setup – what would it be?

    Long text

From questionnaire to dashboard

The dashboard links DORA anchors to DevEx drivers – and shows where to invest:

  • DORA tiles: Deployment frequency, lead time, change failure rate and time to restore as KPI tiles – directly comparable with the familiar elite/high/medium/low clusters from the DORA reports.
  • Flow and friction profile: The flow matrix as diverging bars: what works (local environment? CI?) and what grinds (interruptions? docs?).
  • Friction Pareto: The ranking of the biggest friction sources as sorted bars – the prioritisation for your platform or infrastructure backlog.
  • DevEx trend: Overall satisfaction as a line across waves shows whether tooling investments actually reach developers.
  • Team comparison: Flow statements crossed with teams as a heatmap – reveals whether friction is local (one team, one legacy system) or systemic.
  • “One wish” analysis: The open question on the one improvement, clustered via AI topic analysis – usually the most concrete action list of the whole survey.

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Frequently asked questions

Self-report instead of telemetry – isn't that inaccurate?
DORA research itself has collected the four metrics via surveys for years – perception is surprisingly accurate and also covers what tools cannot see (e.g. waiting time between systems). The combination is ideal: the survey provides priorities and context, telemetry the fine-grained measurement later.
From what team size is the survey worthwhile?
From about eight developers it yields robust patterns; only analyse subgroups of five or more responses to preserve anonymity. In smaller teams the same structure works well as a discussion guide in the retrospective.
How often should we measure?
Semi-annually is a good rhythm: rare enough that things can actually change between waves, frequent enough for a trend. The most important rule: after every wave, ship and communicate at least one visible improvement – otherwise participation drops fast.

Start with this template

Load the template into DataLion, adapt it to your brand and start collecting responses — GDPR-compliant, in minutes.

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