Product Manager of Developer Experience @ Airwallex 2022
Situation and challenges to overcome:
[Commercial] Hard to tie developer experience (DevX) to business outcomes. Our products don’t generate revenue for Airwallex. We demonstrated value by driving operational efficiency for our Solutions Engineering org (thereby getting sponsored
[Cultural] DevX has historically deprioritised: DevX and tech writing didn’t exist as a product domain and developer experience best practices didn’t exist in the 8 years of Airwallex’s existence.
[Capabilities]Little support from the wider business: Our team was “incubated” outside the product and engineering org. Contrast this to Stripe where DevX and docs are embedded in their culture and is incentivised/punished
The initial team structure was 1 PM, 1 designer, 1 tech writer, 3 junior engineers. We lacked engineering and tech writing leadership and lost this headcount in the current economic environment.
DevX Problem Statement:
The DevX Strategy for 2022 was to solve a very simple problem: how do we save time for both: (1) Airwallex Solutions Engineers (SE), and (2) Developer Users.
Key metrics:
SE time saved
Customer waiting time saved
We kept it simple and did three things really well:
“Legitimise” DevX and Tech Writing as a product team
Automate back office tasks for our solutions engineers which impact the customer
Self-serve docs to minimise unnecessary back-and-forth with
1. “Legitimise” DevX and Tech Writing as a product team
Set up the foundation: We built a developer microapp inside the official Airwallex webapp. This was a huge cross functional project to align multiple stakeholders.
Convincing people is most of the battle.
View of Selected Product Management and Consulting Experience
Projects
Developer User Journey Diagnostic
Projects
Developer WebApp: a dedicated app for our developer users inside the official webapp
Impact
Saved 1-2 FTEs by automating webhook JTBDs
Legitimised developers as a core user by justifying to cross-functional stakeholders the criticality of having a dedicated developer portal in the official Airwallex webapp
Product examples
Situation and Problem
Should we build a developer webapp in the official Airwallex webapp?
If so, where: what’s the right information architecture?
Playbooks
Developer Journey Framework
Projects
Simulation APIs: automating testing and manual processes for our developer users
Impact
Saved +2 FTEs by automating key Airwallex user pain points
Introduced the concept of “Simulations” APIs across Airwallex org