Speed and reliance have become the new mantra in the business world. In a world that increasingly relies on digital products, software development is becoming the catalyst for value creation and achieving top-line business results. In any industry, innovation is driving productivity. This is all the more true for technology firms, who enable a lot of digital transformation for their partners/clients. And this means a new age development community and thinking for Tech firms.
Demand for Development is Outpacing Supply
Demand for software development is far outpacing the supply of skilled developers. Evans Data, a leading research company, predicts that the number of developers globally will grow by only 3-4% annually, from 23.9 million in 2019 to 28.7 million in 2024. McKinsey released an article, Developer Velocity: How software excellence fuels business performance in 2020. Both these articles articulate the fact that the technology firms prioritizing developer velocity have four to five times the revenue growth of their counterparts.
A New Focus on the Developer “Experience”
The industry recently coined the term “DXE” (Developer Experience Engineering). The primary focus of a DXE role is to decrease the time spent on maintenance and increase the time spent on building or development. While DXE is considered a new idea, Twitter actually formed an “engineering effectiveness” organization as far back as 2014, and Google has a massive “engineering productivity” team. In many companies, however, the role is emerging organically and is growing.
This, however, is a traditional way of thinking, especially when 2021 was considered the year of the Great Resignation within the technology sector. Companies need to think not just about retention of engineers but also how they can maximize developer productivity, engagement, and business value. They need to consider how they can take the best of each developer, and enhance their experience with various tools that technology can provide.
In addition, creating a communal atmosphere, where the developer community can work in a collaborative way to drive forward together, losing friction and gaining velocity will help with job satisfaction.
Day-to-Day Challenges for Developers
An average day in the life of a developer includes many challenges to working efficiently. Many firms are facing these challenges that slow down their development teams, such as:
- Too many coding languages that keep changing rapidly
- Need for a culture of re-usability and knowledge sharing
- Inefficiencies due to not knowing who to reach out to when in need /project etc. – less autonomy and control
- Too many systems to keep switching to
- Time to deploy code due to process
- Too much clutter
A New Solution for the Developer of the Future
With thousands of developers working on development projects for clients all over the world, Orion pondered this problem for several years looking for a solution to help our developers work optimally. We developed a solution that we have institutionalized over the last few years within our firm to meet new modern expectations.
The solution we built was focused on the following factors:
- Contextual: Personalized single pane of glass for all development activities based on role
- Information Exchange : Reusability through micro UI based concepts
- Optimal Use of Talent: Increased transparency of skill visibility and people availability – visibility of relevant people and availability through a single click
- Coding Language Independence: Build a technological backbone that will make developers less dependent on a coding language.
- Metaverse: Enablement of a proper communication through virtual channels
- Collaboration: Visibility of relevant people, contact people / teams / communities as needed
- Innovation: Idea Couture Pane
Improving the Velocity of Development Projects
Internally we have seen benefits to our development teams with an enhanced developer experience, increased usability, and a collaborative atmosphere enabling higher productivity. We have happier, more productive developers, delivering faster for our clients. We’ve also been able to withstand the looming threat of the Great Resignation.
To find out more about our solution and how you can enable a faster time to market for your development teams, contact us for a discovery session and demo.
References:
- Digital First Technology Magazine – Internet Developer Platform / Developer Experience Engineering
- Forrester – Your Virtual Office In The Cloud
- Gartner – Future of Work Reinvented Resource Center Primer for 2022
