9 parts · reading order ↓
The question of how Developer Relations (DevRel) teams create value has been answered plenty of times (though rarely through systematic research). In 2024 I looked into it properly through 13 interviews with DevRel leaders, culminating in an MBA dissertation at Warwick Business School, unearthing a couple of surprises along the way. This series works through what I found.
Developer Relations is sometimes equated to marketing. Incorporating insights from 13 interviews, I explain why DevRel is better understood as value co-creation.
Developer Experience isn't just central to DevRel strategy. It's both what your team depends on before it can succeed, and what it actively shapes through its work.
Education. Success. Marketing. Programs. These four pillars describe what Developer Relations teams do. But the more important question is what makes that work credible, useful, and trusted by developers.
Two companies can have similarly capable DevRel teams doing similar work and still get different results. In my research, company type, lifecycle stage, and technology cycles kept shaping what DevRel could realistically do.
Academic research on brand communities can help DevRel, but only up to a point. The bigger lesson is where the model breaks: developer communities run on trust in the technology, not loyalty to the brand.
Of the 13 DevRel leaders I interviewed for my MBA dissertation, only two could clearly demonstrate a coherent link between tactical activity and organisational strategy. In this post, I talk through how focusing on the developer journey can help bridge that gap.
DevRel is often framed as the voice of the developer. My research suggests a broader job: gathering representative feedback, reducing friction, and showing developers what changed.
There's a pattern I've seen play out across dozens of DevRel conversations, confirmed in my MBA dissertation research: teams without a clear golden thread from company strategy to daily activity get 'randomised' by whoever asks most urgently. Here's what the research says about why it happens and how to build your way out of it.