Creating a survey
Improve developer experience by collecting insights directly from your engineers at scale. Identify patterns and turn them into actions.
To start creating an engineering survey, navigate to the Surveys page from the sidebar and click Create survey.
Your progress is automatically saved as a draft so you can exit the view and resume later.
Give the survey a name, which will also be visible to the respondents.
Questions
Select the questions to include in the survey. Choose from Swarmia's questions, carefully crafted in collaboration with experts in psychometrics. They are all framed as statements, and the respondents answer them on a five-point scale from strongly disagree to strongly agree. You'll see the estimated time to complete based on your selections.
In addition to the questions you select, the survey will also include an option for the respondents to add open comments at the end.
Custom questions
You can also add your own questions by selecting Add question in one of the topics.
These use the same format as the built-in questions. They should be statements, and the respondents rate how much they agree with each on a five-point scale. Agreeing with the statement is considered good and yields the highest score of 5.
Teams and schedule
On the next tab, select the teams for which the survey will be available.
The team structure and memberships will be saved as a static "snapshot" when the survey goes live. New people added to the selected teams afterward will be automatically added to live surveys, but no other changes will be made.
You can't remove people from the survey after launching it.
Choose an end date for the survey. When it's reached, the survey will close for responses, and the results will become available to admins.
The start date can't be changed. The survey will go live immediately when you launch it.
Preview
Click Preview to see how the respondents will see the survey.
A popup opens, showing the preview with your latest selections. (You can respond as if you belong to any team, but your submission won't be recorded.)
Launching the survey
Click Launch survey when you're ready to go live. The survey is open for responses immediately.
To distribute the survey, click Copy link to get a link you can send to your teams. We also provide you an example message with all the survey information prefilled.
Users in the audience will also see a notification banner on their Swarmia home page:
Reminders
Swarmia automatically sends a Slack notification to all survey participants one hour after the survey opens. After that, Swarmia will notify people who haven’t responded 7, 3, and 1 day(s) before the survey closes.
We'll notify you if we can't find some of the people from Slack. In that case, we recommend manually reminding them.
You can follow the survey participation rates by team to manually remind the ones lagging behind.
Frequently asked questions
Why should I run developer surveys?
You need data to make the most informed decisions for improving your engineering effectiveness. To get the full picture, you can't rely only on system metrics from sources like version control systems or issue trackers. Surveys help you form a comprehensive understanding of how your developers perceive their work. They also allow engineers to voice their frustrations, suggest improvements, and feel heard.
How are developer surveys different from employee engagement surveys?
Employee engagement surveys are a generic way to measure job satisfaction and identify areas for improvement, usually at the company level. Swarmia's developer surveys are purpose-built for engineers with questions about topics like code reviews, automated tests, and technical debt.
Instead of just informing the human resources department and executives, they're a resource for the engineering organization and teams to address hands-on problems autonomously. The engineers can describe challenges in technical terms and get understood.
We recommend running developer surveys alongside any engagement surveys in your company. If you're concerned about the overlap between the two, you can disable some or all the questions under Direction, Collaboration, and Culture.
How are people notified about the survey?
Respondents can access the survey via a link you send them when launching it. We will also send personal Slack notifications one hour after the launch so you can prepare any announcements. People who haven’t responded 7, 3, and 1 day(s) before the survey closes will be reminded via Slack.
Can I add people to a survey after it's live?
Yes! The team structure and memberships will be saved as a static "snapshot" when the survey goes live. New people added to the selected teams afterward will be automatically added to live surveys, but no other changes will be made.
You can't remove people from the survey after launching it.
Can I add people without GitHub accounts to a survey?
Yes! If you use Google or Okta SSO, you can add those people to teams once they have signed up for Swarmia. Then, simply include the team in the survey audience.
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