Kurtis Kemple

Funnels or Flywheels: Cross-Functional Alignment in Developer Relations

August 27th, 2024

When it comes to Developer Relations (DevRel), success isn’t just about engaging developers—it’s about how well your efforts align with and amplify the work of other departments. The key to unlocking DevRel’s full potential lies in seamless cross-functional alignment, regardless of whether your company uses a traditional funnel, a product-led growth (PLG) flywheel, or any other model.

Leveraging Existing Frameworks

Most companies already have established models for tracking customer journeys or product adoption. The goal for DevRel isn’t to reinvent the wheel but to integrate smoothly into these existing frameworks. By aligning with the models your colleagues in Marketing, Sales, and Product are already using, you create a shared language that facilitates better collaboration and understanding.

For instance, if your organization uses a Product-Led Growth (PLG) flywheel, consider how DevRel activities can enhance each stage:

  • Evaluate: Create developer-focused content that helps potential users assess your product’s capabilities and fit for their needs.
  • Activate: Guide new users through their first experience, helping them quickly achieve an “aha” moment with your product.
  • Adopt: Provide resources and support to help users integrate your product into their regular workflows and processes.
  • Expand: Encourage users to explore advanced features and use cases, increasing their engagement and the value they derive from your product.
  • Advocate: Empower satisfied users to share their experiences and recommend your product to others in the developer community.

By mapping DevRel initiatives to these stages, you make it easier for other teams to see the value and impact of your work throughout the entire developer journey.

Connecting to Metrics That Matter

One of the most significant advantages of cross-functional alignment is the ability to tie DevRel efforts directly to key business metrics. When you’re aligned with other departments, you can more easily demonstrate how your work contributes to overall company goals.

For example:

  • If Sales tracks customer acquisition cost (CAC), show how developer education programs reduce the sales cycle length.
  • If Product focuses on feature adoption rates, illustrate how DevRel-led tutorials or documentation improvements boost usage.
  • If Marketing measures engagement rates, highlight how developer community initiatives increase time spent on company platforms.

By speaking the language of metrics that other departments already value, you elevate the perceived importance of DevRel within the organization.

Check out The Developer Advocate’s Guide to Metrics and Reporting for more on metrics!

Learning from Growth Strategies

Growth teams are masters of cross-functional collaboration, and DevRel can learn a lot from their playbook. Let’s look at how some industry leaders in the tech space achieve cross-functional alignment:

  1. Spotify’s “Squad” Model: Spotify organizes its teams into cross-functional “squads” that include members from various disciplines. DevRel teams can adopt this approach by forming task forces that include members from Product, Marketing, and Engineering for specific initiatives.

  2. Airbnb’s Experiment Review Process: Airbnb’s Growth team holds weekly cross-functional experiment review meetings. All teams, including Product, Engineering, and Data Science, participate to review results and make decisions. DevRel can implement similar review processes for developer-focused initiatives, ensuring all relevant teams are involved in decision-making.

  3. LinkedIn’s Horizontal Growth Team: LinkedIn’s Growth team works horizontally across the organization, partnering closely with product teams. They use shared OKRs to ensure alignment. DevRel can similarly create OKRs that align with and support the goals of other departments.

  4. Dropbox’s Growth Council: Dropbox established a Growth Council with representatives from various teams to align on priorities and share learnings. DevRel could initiate a similar “Developer Experience Council” to bring together stakeholders from different departments.

  5. Facebook’s Bootcamp: Facebook’s onboarding program, Bootcamp, rotates new hires through different teams to build cross-functional understanding. DevRel can create “shadowing” programs where team members spend time with other departments to gain insights and build relationships.

  6. HubSpot’s “Solve for the Customer” Mantra: HubSpot aligns all teams around the principle of solving for the customer. DevRel can adopt a similar “Solve for the Developer” approach, encouraging all teams to consider the developer experience in their decision-making.

  7. Slack’s Shared Customer Insights: Slack’s Growth team shares customer insights across the organization, ensuring all teams have a unified view of user needs. DevRel can similarly become a central hub for sharing developer feedback and insights with other teams.

Implementing Cross-Functional Alignment

To truly align DevRel with other departments:

  1. Regular Cross-Team Syncs: Establish recurring meetings where DevRel, Product, Marketing, and Engineering teams can share updates and align on priorities.

  2. Shared OKRs and North Star Metrics: Work with other teams to create Objectives and Key Results that span departments and encourage collaboration. Identify a North Star Metric that all teams can rally behind.

  3. Unified Data Dashboards: Develop dashboards that showcase how DevRel efforts impact metrics across different teams, similar to how Growth teams often maintain company-wide growth dashboards.

  4. Collaborative Content Strategy: Partner with Marketing and Product teams to create a content calendar that serves multiple purposes, from developer education to product promotion.

  5. Cross-Functional Hackathons: Organize internal hackathons where team members from different departments work together on developer-focused projects.

  6. Rotation Programs: Implement short-term rotations where DevRel team members embed with other departments (and vice versa) to build empathy and understanding.

  7. Shared Planning Sessions: Include DevRel in product roadmap planning sessions and marketing campaign brainstorms to ensure the developer perspective is considered from the outset.

Conclusion

In the world of DevRel, the power of cross-functional alignment cannot be overstated. By integrating with existing company models, connecting to established metrics, and learning from Growth strategies, DevRel teams can significantly amplify their impact.

As you refine your DevRel approach, consider how you can better align with other departments. The goal isn’t to create new processes but to seamlessly integrate into the existing organizational framework. By doing so, you’ll not only enhance the developer experience but also drive measurable business outcomes that resonate across the entire company.

Remember, in the end, it’s not about which model you use—it’s about how effectively you collaborate across teams to put developers at the heart of your company’s success.