Metrics inform engineering improvement, but they can’t drive it alone.
This is why today we are expanding Uplevel to become the first holistic engineering optimization system helping leaders drive organizational transformation.
The Uplevel Method is a hands-on practice that integrates data-driven insights with expert guidance. It empowers engineering leaders with complete context and recommendations to build high-performing engineering organizations, starting with a comprehensive assessment and moving to iterative improvement, all powered by the Uplevel platform.
I’ll dive into some of the details below, but let’s first discuss how we got here — and why metrics alone often fall short.
Organizational Change is Difficult
When platform metrics reveal inefficiencies and blockers, the next question we hear from engineering leaders is often “so…what now?”
Measurement is just the beginning — it’s what leaders at large engineering organizations have shown us time and time again. The real challenge comes when they have to turn metrics into improvements that drive business outcomes.
The truth is that most engineering leaders have not been equipped to effect long-term organizational change — which likely explains why two thirds of digital engineering transformations fail. There are a number of reasons for this friction:
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Complex human dynamics require context and don’t follow predictable patterns like code, so change is messy
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Change happens from both bottom-up and top-down, so it takes human support at multiple levels to create lasting improvements
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Traditional metrics like DORA are lagging indicators and don’t help organizations improve
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Translating insights into action for abstract concepts like team culture and productivity is not intuitive
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There is a delicate balance between pushing for improvement and maintaining developer experience and well-being
Good metrics are a signal, and they can help you measure the progress of a well-planned change motion. “What gets measured gets managed,” after all. But improvement comes from knowing what to do with the metrics that you see (and all the additional context that complements the metrics to tell the whole story).
These realities reveal a large gap between the starting point that traditional engineering metrics platforms offer and the systemic change that engineering organizations need.
It’s in this gap that the most interesting work remains to be done.
Meet the Uplevel Method
Our methodology brings experienced engineering leaders and change management experts with decades of experience to these problems, leveraging Uplevel platform data and insights to answer the all-too-common “what now?” engineering leaders often ask.
The Method involves two important steps:
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An assessment that gives organizations the ability to kickstart change a few weeks weeks after implementation, maximizing outcomes and driving data-supported change as soon as possible.
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Iterative Change Enablement, which helps organizations build the skills they need to maximize business value and overcome the common friction points at the heart of engineering transformation challenges.
Both steps of the Method are underpinned by our proprietary WAVE framework for engineering effectiveness, which gives leaders a way to organize their approaches to change and the data they use to measure them.
Engineering Transformation Requires a Holistic Approach
Engineering improvement is a technical and a social problem, and so it requires a holistic strategy that accounts for both parts.
Each component should sharpen the other. A human approach adds necessary context and enablement so leaders can reduce the friction. And advanced data underpins the support that teams receive, helping to accelerate and measure change.
Explore the Uplevel Method
Uplevel's holistic approach that helps engineering leaders drive change that sticks
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This is our vision for Uplevel: a marriage of data and human support to guide complex transformations — and to help engineering leaders know exactly what to do next.