Enabler 7: Developer Recognition

A successful secure coding program thrives on participation, and one of the most effective ways to drive continuous engagement is through meaningful acknowledgement and rewards to recognize effort and achievement. This is the core focus of Enabler 7: Developer Recognition.

So not only does developer recognition mean sharing wins and calling out successes loudly, but it also means celebrating developer achievement with rewards and exclusive swag.

Sharing Wins Loudly

Recognizing developer achievements is closely linked to Enabler 6: Regular Reporting to Leadership. While Enabler 6 focuses on providing consistent updates to the C-suite, Enabler 7 emphasizes celebrating success stories within the developer community.

Sharing early wins loudly and calling out successes helps achieve several vital outcomes:

1. Encouraging Participation: Recognition is a fundamental incentive for developers to engage with training. Whether it means taking part in a competition or tournament, completing a piece of curriculum, or even contributing to an overall participation goal, developers can gain a real sense of organizational achievement when their successes are highlighted for others to see.
2. Creating FOMO (Fear of Missing Out): The more security is normalized within your developer community, the more easily it can be celebrated and treated as something fun. With gamified learning especially, secure code training becomes less of a chore and more of something developers miss out on if they don’t also get to compete and have fun with their colleagues.
3. Harnessing Technical Ego and Bragging Rights: Developers are often competitive and keen to prove their technical supremacy over their peers. Clear measures of success, such as winning a competition or earning high-level certifications, can tap into technical ego and the desire for bragging rights.

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Enhancing Recognition with Swag

Both recognition and rewards are keys to creating sustainable developer engagement for your secure coding program. Swag such as stickers, tech gadgets, and apparel is generally well received by developers, but there is also a delicate balance to strike between attainability and exclusivity. 

Swag must be viewed as an exclusive status symbol, coveted by developers as a sign of achievement, rather than acquired through freebies and mass giveaways. This helps you reinforce that prizes are earned, reserved for those who have reached a certain status in your program.  

Smaller pieces of swag, like stickers, may be great options for developers who complete the general curriculum, while larger swag, like hoodies and t-shirts, is reserved for security champions, competition winners, and certification completions. Sharing these achievements helps give developers something meaningful to strive for, which is especially important for multi-level Certification Programs (Enabler 5) that help manage developer progression.

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Leveraging Leadership and Ecosystem

To maximize the impact of recognition, successful programs leverage key enablers:

• C-Suite Support (Enabler 2): Leveraging the C-Suite or senior leadership is crucial to encourage and drive participation and strongly embed a desire to take part within the wider dev community. C-level signatures on certificates can make the achievement feel more valuable and important to the company overall.
• Communications Plan (Enabler 3): Recognition should be integrated into the program's ongoing communication stream. Sharing key wins, highlighting developer achievements, and calling out competition results helps developers feel celebrated and gives them something to strive for.
• AppSec Champions (The Human Element): The bragging rights associated with being recognized can drive developers to become internal "go-to gurus" or leaders in secure coding topics. Using recognized front-runners as beacons for others can increase usage/adoption across your secure coding program as a whole.

Depending on your organizational culture, also consider the spirit of competition in motivating your developers. In highly competitive environments, being proven to be more technically skilled than peers can be a significant motivator, sometimes leading to developers completing entire training just to prove superior skills. This recognition can have extremely positive consequences for their career prospects.

Think of Developer Recognition as the applause that fuels the engine of your program. Regular reports (Enabler 6) confirm to management that the engine is running smoothly, but the public celebration of individual and team wins injects motivation directly into the developers, creating a competitive, desirable, and self-sustaining security learning culture. 

In our next post, we’ll explore Enabler 8: Branding Your Program and how to create a cohesive developer experience through your brand.

Have additional questions? 

Customers can contact the account team or support@securecodewarrior.com. Prospective customers can speak with a member of our sales team by contacting us here.

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