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As a technology-first company, Cashfree Payments is dedicated to constructing resilient products tailored for developers joining the digital payments revolution. Our robust payments infrastructure handles approx USD 80 billion annually, acting as a backbone for over 6,00,000 businesses in India.
Our mission revolves around enabling businesses with swift and cost-effective payment solutions. Recognising the profound impact our software solutions have on developers and their productivity, we place a paramount emphasis on crafting a high-quality experience for them. To realize this vision, we prioritise developers, enabling them with the best of the tools to construct their applications.
Behind all this is our Developer Experience Team, a pivotal unit within the Cashfree Engineering team. Comprising of a lean and tightly-knit group of developers, product managers, and technical writers, this team is entrusted with ensuring seamless integrations for developers across India.
We sat down with Raj Nandan Sharma – Associate Director of Engineering, and Shubhi Maheshwari – Product Manager, both integral members of the Developer Experience Team, to gain deeper insights into their invaluable contributions.
Hello! Tell us about what lays the foundation of the Developer Experience(DevX) Team at Cashfree Payments. What is the core focus of the team?
Raj – At Cashfree Payments, prioritising Developer Experience is our commitment to empowering the unsung heroes behind India’s payments innovations. As we all know, developers have a plethora of tools to juggle with, in their daily lives – they would naturally go for solutions that are efficient and robust. Also, developers are the first set of users who interact with software solutions utilised by any company. So, we focus on crafting a smooth journey for them right from the outset.
In essence, the primary objective of the DevX team at Cashfree Payments is to ensure a cohesive experience for developers utilising Cashfree products. We aim to enable any developer to effortlessly integrate our products within a mere 15 minutes. Additionally, developers should be able to look into the performance of their integration at any given moment.
How do you go about building tools for developers to help them achieve a seamless flow?
Shubhi – Our strategy for developing developer tools commences with a thorough understanding of integration challenges.
In addition to providing intuitive APIs, robust SDKs, and comprehensive documentation, we consistently develop tools and resources designed to assist developers at every stage of their pre-integration and post-integration journey.
Through streamlining processes and enhancing support, we empower developers to accelerate their “time to go-live” and efficiently address any post-integration issues during the “time-to-debug” phase.
Can you provide a recent example of any tools that were built in response to specific pain points?
Shubhi – Sure! Directly addressing the pain points and certain challenges related to integrations, we have recently launched DevStudio. It provides a user-friendly playground for developers to explore, try and test various Cashfree Payments’ product integrations.
In short, our DevStudio offers the liberty of experimentation on a playground for developers before they go on to integrate our solutions.
Moreover, DevStudio simplifies the integration process – by offering interactive guides that allow developers to try out various integrations with just a few clicks, eliminating the need for coding or setup on their end. Initially launched for the payment gateway, we have plans to extend DevStudio to cover other products shortly.
DevChallenge – an internal hackathon conducted by the DevX Team to figure out the challenges in our integration journey
What are some of the metrics we keep track of when it comes to DevX?
Shubhi – In the developers’ pre-integration journey, “Time to Go Live” stands out as a crucial metric. Our ongoing effort is to ensure that our integration process remains intuitive, straightforward, and swift, ultimately leading to accelerated integration and quicker deployment. DevStudio represents another initiative aimed at assisting developers in comprehending the integration process and obtaining all the necessary resources and code snippets to facilitate a seamless integration.
Transitioning to the post-integration phase, a key metric we monitor is the occurrence of “API errors (4xx)” in the merchant’s integration. To aid developers in this stage, we’ve developed a suite of DevTools, encompassing features such as API logs and Error Alerting. These tools empower developers to swiftly identify, understand, and debug errors, facilitating a seamless post-integration experience.
Would you like to shed light on what’s in the pipeline for the DevX team, in terms of tools or trends that we are exploring?
Raj – We’re in the process of creating a self-service alerting tool designed for both developers and merchants. Additionally, we’re consistently expanding our playground by incorporating various products, ensuring everyone can swiftly experience our offerings.
When it comes to documentation and consistent updates, what is the process you follow to ensure the perfect go-to kit for developers out there?
Shubhi – In crafting an ideal developer kit, we maintain highly comprehensive documentation that includes setup guides, product documentation, API references, and troubleshooting resources.
We consistently update our content in alignment with product releases and user feedback. Our commitment is to ensure that developers at all proficiency levels find our documentation accessible and easy to navigate.
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