Snapshots

Snapshots are recurring surveys that help you understand how engineers, product managers, and designers experience their work. They combine scores with written feedback to identify friction and track improvements over time. This approach builds on developer experience research that combines feedback from developers with data about the systems they use.

Snapshots let you:

  • Give each discipline questions relevant to its work.
  • Measure collaboration, tools, processes, and the impact of AI.
  • Find patterns across teams using scores, comments, and breakdowns.
  • Choose improvements and track whether they make a difference.

How snapshots work

  1. Configure the survey. Choose questions, set up branches for different audiences, and confirm the schedule.
  2. Collect responses. Participants receive a survey through your organization’s configured delivery channel. DX sends reminders to people who haven’t responded.
  3. Review and act. Explore results, acknowledge feedback, and agree on improvements with your teams.
  4. Repeat. Run snapshots on a regular cadence, typically quarterly, to see what changes.

Question banks

DX includes built-in question banks for three disciplines:

  • Software engineering: Development tools and processes, collaboration, and the experience of building and delivering software.
  • Product management: Customer access, priority stability, roadmap planning, and collaboration with engineering and design. Workflow questions cover areas such as requirement rework, meeting load, and AI time savings.
  • Product design: Research, design feedback, component reuse, and collaboration during implementation. Workflow questions cover areas such as design rework, implementation fidelity, and AI-assisted refinement.

Each bank contains two types of questions:

  • Drivers measure how people experience their work, such as whether they have time to focus or can get timely input from other teams.
  • Workflows measure specific activities and friction, such as time spent in meetings, the share of work that needs redoing, or time saved with AI.

Start with the built-in questions, then adjust the selection to fit your goals. You can also add custom questions and satisfaction ratings for your organization’s tools and processes.

Industry benchmarks are available for supported software engineering questions. Product management and Product design benchmarks are not yet available.

Tailor questions with branches

A branch is a version of the survey for a particular audience. For example, engineers can receive software engineering questions while product managers and designers receive questions tailored to their work, all within the same snapshot.

Adding a Product management or Product design branch loads its default questions. You can then customize each branch and review results by branch. The survey’s schedule and delivery settings are shared across branches.

See Configuration for setup instructions.

Get started

  1. Configure your snapshot.
  2. Prepare your teams and communicate what to expect.
  3. Review results and plan improvements after the snapshot closes.