Is Product Led Growth (PLG) the DevOps of the DevRel World?

A recap (and evolution) of my DevRelCon talk that explored how PLG can break down barriers between the developer relations team and the rest of the org.

I’m in the process of updating a presentation that I initially gave at DevRelCon 2022 in Prague, “Is Product Led Growth the DevOps of the DevRel World?” and I figured this would be a good time to share and ask for feedback and comments.

Many developer tooling companies are using (or experimenting with) a product-led growth (PLG) go-to-market motion, and Ambassador Labs was no different. We had several wins and losses with PLG while I was working as Head of DevRel at this company, and this presentation summarised my key learnings.

Breaking down silos: ProdLedBizEngRel?

The core premise of the talk revolved around my experiences of DevOps—having worked as both a developer and operator in the past—and mapping these onto my more recent roles in DevRel and technical marketing.

I’m sure many of you will recognize the challenges of working in silos. A lot of things get “thrown over the wall” and teams often aren’t fully aligned with the goals or processes (value stream). With software delivery, we saw this with the “business”, UX, development, QA, and ops teams:

And we also see this with the product, DevRel, marketing (growth), and sales teams in many modern go-to-market motions.

When implemented well, DevOps can be the catalyst to break down organizational silos. I saw this at several organizations during my days working as a software delivery consultant. More recently, I saw parallels between this and implementing PLG at Ambassador Labs. I also heard similar stories from friends working in DevRel at other organizations.

PLG is a “bottom up” (developer-focused) go-to-market motion

Within the presentation, my pitch was that when done well, product-led growth (PLG) can be a catalyst to improve go-to-market collaboration and communication across the organization. And in a developer tooling company, the DevRel team often acts as the bridge between other departments, such as marketing and sales.

Not only can DevRel teams help translate requirements and messaging across departments, but we’re typically the stakeholder closest to the customer, i.e. the developer!

The DevRel superpower: customer empathy!

At Ambassador Labs, my team worked very closely with the growth/marketing teams to help generate hypotheses and experiments. We also helped interpret the data we collected and the insights generated.

The DevRel superpower is the ability to empathize with the customer—the developer—and help to identify value, aha moments, and opportunities for product virality.

To do this, DevRel teams must keep up to date with industry trends, frequently engage with the community, and regularly talk to potential and existing customers. I can’t emphasize enough the value of qualitative insight to complement quantitative data!

DevRel and PLG: Strong leadership is required!

This may sound obvious, but I also learned that strong leadership and management were required within individual teams and across the executive function of the organization. Implementing product-led growth (much like implementing DevOps) requires buy-in at all levels—and this starts at the top!

Video and slides

The good folks at DevRelCon were kind enough to record all of the talks from the event and upload them to their (excellent!) YouTube channel:

You can find the slides on Speaker Deck: “DevRelCon 22: Is Product Led Growth (PLG) the “DevOps” of the DevRel World? (Slides)”.

Additional DevRel & PLG resources

I’ve shared additional thoughts on the role that product-led growth (PLG) can play within the developer tooling space, and I teamed up with my buddy Adam LaGreca (from 10KMedia) to write this article for The New Stack last year: “Product-Led Growth for Dev-First Business: Is It Inevitable?” This article also embedded an excellent panel session recording that featured one of my Ambassador Lab’s teammates, Kelsey Evans, who led most of our PLG efforts.

Here are three other related resources I consistently find myself recommending:

• The Product-Led Geek. Ben Williams is one of the OG PLG folks who honed his craft while working at Snyk, arguably one of the best organizations at developer marketing. This Substack is a must-read!

• Product-Led Growth: How to Build a Product That Sells Itself (Amazon UK | USA). Wes Bush and the team have shared a lot of wisdom about PLG in this book and the accompanying podcast series, “The Product-Led Podcast”.

• MKT1 Newsletter. Although not exclusively PLG-focused, Emily Kramer and Kathleen Estreich regularly share a lot of insightful commentary and frameworks for all things go-to-market.

Want to know more about PLG and DevRel?

I hope this post has helped to shed some light on how product-led growth relates to DevRel.

Please comment below and let me know if you want more content on learning in the role of developer relations.

And don’t forget to subscribe! I’m aiming to share a post every two weeks or so.