In recent years, development teams have broadened their focus beyond performance measures such as delivery speed and feature scope, now considering also factors like working conditions and developer satisfaction. These aspects have been systematically collected and summarized under the term Developer Experience (DX). The present paper sets out a structured concept for sustainably improving DX in a medium-sized corporation with approximately one hundred developers, where establishing dedicated DX teams is not a viable option. A detailed sociotechnical analysis is presented, examining how technical, organizational and social factors interact and how these interactions can be intentionally shaped to foster a productive, motivating and enduring development environment. A multi-stage, methodical approach was employed to analyse Developer Experience and to enable reasonably founded conclusions. The initial stage comprised a thorough, predominantly quantitative survey supplemented by project analyses. The second stage of the research involved the execution of a qualitative focus group workshop. A total of 47 employees completed the survey in full, with no indication of systematic non-response bias. The focus group, comprising seven participants, was utilized to further explore the prevailing circumstances. Another pillar of the study was a static analysis of the corporation's repositories to gain pain points that could influence the Developer Experience. This approach resulted in a set of context-sensitive candidate measures intended to enhance DX in medium-sized organizations. The experiences demonstrate that it is feasible to discern areas for enhancement with low effort and without the necessity of a dedicated DX team. While the identified measures are immediately actionable within the studied context, their long-term effectiveness has yet to be empirically validated.

@inproceedings{LangeB26,
  title = {Adopting Concepts for Sustainable Improvement of the Developer Experience within a Medium-sized Corporation},
  author = {Jannik Lange and Axel Böttcher},
  booktitle = {FSE},
  year = {2026},
  doi = {10.1145/3803437.3805210}
}