Accelerate Chapter 10 Discussion Points

Chapter 10 of Accelerate: The Science of Lean Software and DevOps: Building and Scaling High Performing Technology Organizations, goes over employee satisfaction, identity, and engagement:

• People are at the heart of every technology transformation
• Employee loyalty
• To understand employee engagement in the context of DevOps, we look at it through the lens of a broadly used benchmark of customer loyalty: Net Promoter Score (NPS)
• High performers have better employee loyalty, as measured by employee Net Promoter Score (eNPS)
• Measuring NPS
• Net Promoter Score is calculated based on a single question:
• How likely is it that you would recommend our company/product/service to a friend or colleague?
• Net Promoter Score is scored on a 0-10 scale, and is categorized as follows:
• Customer who give a score of 9 or 10 are considered promoters
• Promoters create greater value for the company because they tend to buy more, cost less to acquire and retain, stay longer, and generate positive word of mouth
• Those giving a score of 7 or 8 are passives
• Passives are satisfied, but much less enthusiastic customers. They are less likely to provide referrals and more likely to defect if something better comes along
• Those giving a score from 0 to 6 are detractors
• Detractors are more expensive to acquire and retain, they defect faster, and can hurt the business through negative word of mouth
• In this study, two questions were asked to capture employee Net Promoter Score:
• Would you recommend your ORGANIZATION as a place to work to a friend or colleague?
• Would you recommend your TEAM as a place to work to a friend or colleague?
• Companies with highly engaged workers grew revenues two and a half times as much as those with low engagement levels
• Employee Net Promoter Score was highly correlated with:
• The extent to which the organization collects customer feedback and uses it to inform the design of products and features
• The ability of teams to visualize and understand the flow of products or features through development all the way to the customer
• The extent  to which employees identify with their organization's values and goals, and the effort they are willing to put in to make the organization successful
• NPS is calculated by subtracting the percentage of detractors from the percentage of promoters. For example, if 40% of employees are detractors and only 20% are promoters, the Net Promoter Score is -20%
• Changing organizational culture and identity
• People are an organization's greatest asset, yet so often they're treated like expendable resources
• When leaders invest in their people and enable them to do their best work, employees identify more strongly with the organization and are willing to go the extra mile to help it be successful
• In return, organizations get higher levels of performance and productivity
• To measure identity, people were measured on the following statements:
• I am glad I chose to work for this organization rather than another company
• I talk of this organization to my friends as a great company to work for
• I am willing to put in a great deal of effort beyond what is normally expected to help my organization be successful
• I find that my values and my organization's values are very similar
• In general, the people employed by my organization are working toward the same goal
• I feel that my organization cares about me
• In today's fast-moving and competitive world, the best thing you can do for your products, your company, and your people is institute a culture of experimentation and learning, and invest in the technical and management capabilities that enable it
• How does job satisfaction impact organizational performance?
• People do better work when they:
• Feel supported by their employers
• Have the tools and resources to do their work
• Feel their judgement is valued
• Better work results in higher software delivery performance and a higher level of organizational performance
• How does DevOps contribute to job satisfaction?
• Job satisfaction depends strongly on having the right tools and resources to do your work
• The measure of job satisfaction looks at a few key things:
• If you are satisfied in your work
• If you are given the tools and resources to do your work
• If your job makes good use of your skills and abilities
• The study found that good DevOps technical practices predict job satisfaction
• Automation matters because it gives over to computers the things that computers are good at: rote tasks that require no thinking
• This allows people to focus on the things they're good at:
• Weighing the evidence
• Thinking through problems
• Making decisions
• Being able to apply one's judgement and experience to challenging problems is a big part of what makes people satisfied with their work
• Diversity in tech - What our research found
• Diversity matters
• Research shows that teams with more diversity with regard to gender or underrepresented minorities
• Are smarter
• Achieve better team performance
• Achieve better business outcomes
• It is also important to note that diversity is not enough
• Teams and organizations must be inclusive
• An inclusive organization is one where "all organizational members feel welcome and valued for who they are and what they  'bring to the table'"
• Women in DevOps
• Women are drastically underrepresented in DevOps currently
• Underrepresented minorities in DevOps
• This group is also drastically underrepresented
• What other research tells us about diversity
• There is a great deal of research that links greater diversity to higher organizational performance
• What we can do
• It's up to all of us to prioritize diversity and promote inclusive environments