John O’Connell, Director of Software Engineering Solutions, Expleo
In today’s hyper-competitive enterprise environment, developers are being stretched like never before. Microsoft’s Work Trend Index report, which surveyed 31,000 employees and leaders from around the globe, found that 70% of respondents would delegate as much as possible to AI to lessen their workload. Amidst a widening developer shortage, the importance of maintaining and improving developer productivity has never been more-evident, and AI will certainly play a role in this regard, as I discussed in Can Generative AI plug the 4 million software developer gap?
Factors that undermine developer productivity
Developer productivity refers to the ability of software engineers to deliver high-quality code and features that align with the business goals in a timely and efficient manner. It’s a crucial factor that affects the success of any software project, as well as the satisfaction and retention of the developers themselves. However, as developer productivity experts know, poorly defined project requirements or constantly changing specifications can lead to confusion and mis-allocation of resources, while limited access to necessary tools can slow down development. Additionally, miscommunication or conflicting ideas can hinder progress and extend development timelines. Then of course, if developers have lots of meetings, they have less time for coding, especially if the meetings are spread out throughout the day they can disrupt workflow. The challenge is keeping the developers in the Integrated Development Environment (IDE) while ensuring essential communication is seamless.
With these challenges in mind, it’s important to have a holistic and balanced approach to developer productivity that considers both the process and the outcome of software development, as well as the individual and team aspects of it. Here are some tips and best practices to help you improve developer productivity:
1. Define clear and realistic goals and expectations
Remember, you can’t hit a target you don’t have. Leadership teams must set out a clear roadmap for what they’re trying to achieve from the get-go. One of the key factors that affect developer productivity is having a clear vision and direction for the project. They need to know what they’re working on, why they’re working on it, and how they’re expected to work on it. This helps them prioritise their tasks, plan their time, avoid scope creep, and deliver value to the stakeholders. order for them to achieve this, you need to define clear and realistic goals and expectations for the project, including:
- Scope, requirements, specifications, and deliverables of the project.
- Timeline, milestones, deadlines, and dependencies of the project.
- Roles, responsibilities, expectations, and accountability of each team member.
- Standards, guidelines, best practices, and tools for coding, testing, reviewing, documenting, and deploying the project.
- Metrics, indicators, feedback mechanisms, and evaluation criteria for measuring the progress and quality of the project.
- Leaders also need to communicate these goals and expectations clearly and consistently to all the developers involved in the project.
- Tools like Clickup or Asana can help streamline project management and manage expectations effectively.
2. Provide adequate resources and support
Developers need to have access to the tools, technologies, platforms, libraries, frameworks, documentation, data sources and APIs that they need to complete their tasks efficiently and effectively. To provide adequate resources and support for your developers, you need to:
- Conduct a thorough analysis of the technical needs and challenges of the project.
- Choose the most suitable tools, technologies, platforms, libraries, frameworks, documentation, data sources, APIs etc. for the project.
- Provide training, guidance, tutorials, examples, references, tips etc. for using these resources.
- Ensure that these resources are updated, maintained, secured, backed up, documented etc.
- Resolve any technical issues, bugs, errors, conflicts etc. that may arise during the project.
- Provide technical assistance, advice, feedback, reviews etc. to help developers solve problems and improve their code.
- Businesses can also use tools like GitHub Co-pilot to help provide better resources and support for their developers and boost productivity.
3. Foster a positive and collaborative culture
Developers need to feel valued, respected, trusted and empowered to carry out their work. They also need to have opportunities to learn, grow, innovate and experiment. They don’t need to be micromanaged. It’s the role of leaders to coach and direct, but they must give their developers the necessary space to iterate and innovate. To cultivate a culture that foster is positive and collaborative, you need to:
- Promote a culture of empowerment and respect by giving developers autonomy in decision-making, while providing opportunities for growth and upskilling.
- Facilitate transparency through regular feedback sessions among your developers.
- Encourage communication, coordination, and cooperation through tools like Teams or Slack.
- Champion continuous learning and development and reward experimentation.
4. Optimise your workflow and processes
Developers need to have a smooth, efficient, effective, and consistent workflow that helps them complete their tasks with minimal friction or interruption. To optimise your workflow and processes for your project, you need to:
- Streamline your workflow and processes by eliminating unnecessary, redundant, or inefficient steps or tasks.
- Leverage tools, scripts, bots. that can perform repetitive, routine, or tedious tasks.
- Integrate your workflow and processes by using tools, APIs, etc. that can connect, sync, or transfer data or information between different platforms or systems.
- Monitor your workflow and processes by using tools, dashboards, reports, etc. that can track, measure, analyse, or visualise the performance or quality of your project.
- You can use Tools like CircleCI to help you optimise your workflow and processes for your project.
5. Improve your skills and knowledge
Developers need to constantly learn new skills and broaden their knowledge to help them improve their code quality, solve problems, and deliver value. Developer imposter syndrome is very real, and if they’re not building their skills, they will second guess themselves. Developers can improve their skills and knowledge by:
- Staying updated with the latest trends, technologies and best practices in the software development industry.
- Learning new skills, languages, frameworks and libraries that can help enhance their coding abilities.
- Using tools like Visual Studio Code to help improve skills and knowledge for their project.
- Honing these skills through exercises, challenges and projects.
- Sharing their skills by teaching, mentoring, blogging, podcasting – all of which can help them solidify their coding knowledge.
With the global developer shortage projected to reach four million by 2025, engaging with developer productivity experts should be a top priority for businesses. This involves setting clear goals, minimising distractions, providing access to necessary tools and resources, implementing automated testing and deployment processes, and promoting a healthy culture of trust and collaboration among developers. These steps can enable developers to work more effectively and efficiently, leading to higher productivity and better outcomes in software development projects.
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