What is Developer Relations
Core pillars
Devrel is a role that sparks different unique perspective when speaking about the role. If you ask ten Devrel professionals what it means, you will get ten unique perspectives, some see it as community driven, while some as advocacy, or support. Despite these different views, DevRel is built on these core pillars that shape it’s work
Education
This is a pillar that has to do with empowering developers with knowledge and it involves:- Creating high-quality contents(tutorials, docs, blog posts, videos)
- Teaching complex concepts and making them accessible
Advocacy
This pillar has to do with amplifying developers needs and interests and it involves:- Providing feedback to product teams and influencing decisions
- Making developers feel heard
Community
This pillar has to do with building a space whether online or offline around a product and it involves:- Creating a space for discussion, feedback and growth.
- Fostering connection, collaborations through meetups and hackathons.
1. Advocacy
Mission: Represent the product to developers and represent developers to the product team.
| Aspect | Details |
|---|---|
| What it covers | Conference talks, livestream demos, sample apps & repos, technical blog posts, podcast appearances, social media engagement. |
| Internal side | Champions the “voice of the developer” in roadmap discussions; flags DX (Developer eXperience) pain points early. |
| Best practices | • Lead with real code, not slides. • Show “Hello World → production” journeys. • Keep talks vendor-neutral where possible to build credibility. |
| Key metrics | Reach (views, attendees, repo stars), sentiment (survey scores, social mentions), and feature adoption traces back to advocate content. |
2. Enablement
Mission: Shorten the time from “I just found this API” to “I’m shipping something with it.”
| Aspect | Details |
|---|---|
| What it covers | Core docs, tutorials, quick-start guides, how-to videos, code labs, SDKs & CLIs, sample integrations, workshops & instructor-led training. |
| Developer goals | Unblock setup, clarify best practices, surface advanced patterns. |
| Best practices | • Docs = part of the product; treat them like code (version control, CI, reviews). • Offer multiple learning modalities: written, video, hands-on lab. • Track where devs drop off and patch those gaps first. |
| Key metrics | Time-to-first-hello-world (TTFHW), activation rate (first successful API call), tutorial completion %, docs satisfaction (thumbs-up/down). |
3. Community
Mission: Turn one-time users into long-term collaborators who learn from—and teach—each other.
| Aspect | Details |
|---|---|
| What it covers | Forums, Discord/Slack servers, Stack Overflow tags, user groups & meetups, conferences, ambassador / champions programs, hackathons. |
| Value to devs | Peer support, networking, a sense of belonging, visibility for their projects, and influence on the roadmap. |
| Best practices | • Establish a clear Code of Conduct and enforce it consistently. • Recognise and reward contributors (badges, swag, speaker slots, early beta access). • Seed discussions but let members own the narrative. |
| Key metrics | Monthly active members, question-resolution rate & speed, contributor count, retention (returning participants), and community NPS. |
4. Feedback Loops
Mission: Continuously translate real-world developer insights into product improvements—and close the loop so developers see the impact of their feedback.
| Aspect | Details |
|---|---|
| What it covers | Structured feedback channels (GitHub Issues, beta programs, surveys), DX audits, “office hours,” dedicated product-advisory boards, churn & usage analytics. |
| Two-way flow | 1️⃣ Collect → tag, triage, quantify. 2️⃣ Prioritise with PM/engineering. 3️⃣ Act → ship fixes/features. 4️⃣ Close the loop → acknowledge the dev who surfaced it. |
| Best practices | • Make feedback capture friction-free (one-click in docs, in-CLI prompts). • Publish public changelogs mapping release items to community issues. • Share roadmap context so devs know why something is or isn’t prioritized. |
| Key metrics | % of roadmap items sourced from community, issue-fix lead time, reopened-issue rate, qualitative DX/NPS trend. |
Putting It All Together
The pillars overlap intentionally:- Great Advocacy content drives devs to the docs, boosting Enablement.
- A supportive Community surfaces insights that feed Feedback Loops.
- Faster fixes from Feedback Loops give Advocates better stories to tell.