This article is based on Katie Miller’s talk at the Developer Marketing Summit in 2023. As a DMA member, you can enjoy the complete recording here. For more exclusive content, head over to your membership dashboard.

Do you find yourself being pushed to achieve ambitious goals with limited resources? If so, you're not alone. 

Here’s a peek at the landscape we’re operating in:

  • Looking at data from SiliconANGLE and Forbes, we see that software spending is still up year over year per employee, but has slowed down from the past two years. 
  • Companies are saving through cost optimization, looking to maximize the impact, utility, and convenience of the purchases they've made. 
  • Overcorrection and economic worries are affecting the tech hiring landscape.

How do we as developer marketers make an impact and get work done with many seemingly conflicting and unknown forces at play? We go a little rogue.

So, today I’m going to share three lessons on how you can deliver greater impact with lean resources, with a little help from one of my favorite movies: Rogue One.

In case you haven't seen Rogue One, this is the Star Wars prequel that explains how Princess Leia got the original Death Star plans. In this film, there are themes of strategy, scrappiness, understanding the impact of the mission, and of course, hope that we can put into our own developer marketing work.

Here’s what we’ll cover:

  1. Building the right team
  2. Securing resources through proofs of concept
  3. Planning for the impact beyond you

So, are you ready to learn how to make your lean resources feel like an army? Great! Let's dive into the developer marketing lessons we can glean from a galaxy far, far away.

Building the right team

Let's begin with building the right team. In order for Rogue One to achieve its goals, it needed to assemble a highly effective team, which, in what seemed like the waning days of the Rebellion, was no small feat.

First, you had Cassian Andor, who you can think of as the directly responsible individual. He owned the mission and was accountable back to the rebellion leadership. 

Next, you had Jyn Erso, a trusted partner acquired for her relationship with a key source of information (Saw Gerrera), a shared goal (finding her father and stopping the Empire), and a personal benefit to be gained from being on the team (freedom).

Finally, the team picked up additional members they recognized as having value. You had Chirrut Îmwe and Baze Malbus, warriors who protected the team in dire circumstances, and Bodhi Rook, a renegade Empire pilot who happened to have a handy spaceship. I like to think of these characters as "opportunistic resources". 

Case study: Developer social media

How can we apply this team-building principle to developer marketing? Let me share a case study from my time leading global developer social media programs at Google. 

When I first started, it was only me officially on the team, with three brands and a dozen channels to manage. I quickly needed to broaden the idea of "team" to ensure the resources to drive processes, content, and measurement globally.

So, first, I identified the directly responsible individual who owned the program and was accountable for its success. That was me. 

Next, I identified partners with shared goals and influence within their particular spheres of ownership to have a healthy pipeline of content, as well as a broader network of coverage for posting content. 

This was a mix of developer advocates representing various platforms, as well as developer program leads from around the world for whom social media may have been a piece of their scope, but was often hard to prioritize with competing responsibilities. For these partners, the mutual benefit gained was not needing to create their own processes, and being able to leverage one another's content.

Finally, I found opportunistic resources: brands and platforms with some overlap and interest, whether through audience or interest in solving the same program management challenges.