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Developer Relations (DevRel) Roles: an Exploratory Study on Practitioners’ opinions

Published: 05 October 2021 Publication History

Abstract

Amazon, Google, and Facebook are examples of organizations that are investing in Developer Relations (DevRel) teams to support the synergy among developer communities’ expectations and the organization’s goals. The DevRel strategies (e.g., engaging and maturing developer communities) require the understanding of team structure to improve results. Identifying roles is a critical activity because DevRel people must plan, perform and monitor specific strategies to attract, engage, and mature developer communities. This research investigates the DevRel Roles by describing definitions and skills for each role. We synthesize the ”voice” of 116 practitioners from 19 countries with a grey literature review. We discuss nine identified roles regarding definition and skills. The roles include, for example, Developer Programs Engineer, Developer/Technical Advocate, Developer/Technical Evangelist, and Technical Writer. We noticed a lack of standardization of roles in DevRel.

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Cited By

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  • (2024)OpenRank Leaderboard: Motivating Open Source Collaborations Through Social Network Evaluation in AlibabaProceedings of the 46th International Conference on Software Engineering: Software Engineering in Practice10.1145/3639477.3639734(346-357)Online publication date: 14-Apr-2024
  • (2023)A Developer Relations (DevRel) model to govern developers in Software EcosystemsJournal of Software: Evolution and Process10.1002/smr.238935:5Online publication date: 25-Apr-2023
  • (2022)A Survey on Skills of DevRel professionalsProceedings of the XVIII Brazilian Symposium on Information Systems10.1145/3535511.3535522(1-8)Online publication date: 16-May-2022

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cover image ACM Other conferences
SBES '21: Proceedings of the XXXV Brazilian Symposium on Software Engineering
September 2021
473 pages
ISBN:9781450390613
DOI:10.1145/3474624
© 2021 Association for Computing Machinery. ACM acknowledges that this contribution was authored or co-authored by an employee, contractor or affiliate of a national government. As such, the Government retains a nonexclusive, royalty-free right to publish or reproduce this article, or to allow others to do so, for Government purposes only.

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Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 05 October 2021

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Author Tags

  1. DevRel
  2. Developer Relations
  3. Software Ecosystem
  4. Team Roles

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  • Short-paper
  • Research
  • Refereed limited

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SBES '21
SBES '21: Brazilian Symposium on Software Engineering
September 27 - October 1, 2021
Joinville, Brazil

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Overall Acceptance Rate 147 of 427 submissions, 34%

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Cited By

View all
  • (2024)OpenRank Leaderboard: Motivating Open Source Collaborations Through Social Network Evaluation in AlibabaProceedings of the 46th International Conference on Software Engineering: Software Engineering in Practice10.1145/3639477.3639734(346-357)Online publication date: 14-Apr-2024
  • (2023)A Developer Relations (DevRel) model to govern developers in Software EcosystemsJournal of Software: Evolution and Process10.1002/smr.238935:5Online publication date: 25-Apr-2023
  • (2022)A Survey on Skills of DevRel professionalsProceedings of the XVIII Brazilian Symposium on Information Systems10.1145/3535511.3535522(1-8)Online publication date: 16-May-2022

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