While much is known about developers' preferred coding languages, frameworks and cloud platforms, less is understood about how developers prefer to work and what they actually want to work on. Wonder no more. Atlassian has released its first-ever “State of the Developer” report, which provides a fresh look at how developers' attitudes and preferences about work have changed in a remote and hybrid world.
The study found four top software development trends that can help organizations better understand and manage their dev teams to keep them happy and engaged. We’ve unpacked these trends and identified where a partner like Contegix can provide additional help as teams adapt their workflows to support developer preferences, especially while more than half (60%) of developers today are impacted by burnout.
1. The rise of “You build it, you run it”
Creating software is rewarding—and more developers would prefer to stay connected to the product once it goes out into the world, believing they’re best equipped to support it because they built it.
This philosophy is called “You build it, you run it” (YBIYRI), and it’s become increasingly prevalent over the past decade with the rise of devops adoption, shifting the way that companies think about the developer lifecycle. Atlassian’s study found that 59% of teams have adopted a YBIYRI approach, which expands developers’ roles, bringing them closer to end users as part of a feedback loop.
Adopting YBIYRI may also require organizations to hire for a range of new roles, including front-end and back-end developers, security engineers, project managers and solution architects so each teammate can stay connected to their aspect of the product.
2. Balancing coding from scratch with increased use of tools and platforms
The majority (65%) of developers believe writing new code is currently their most valuable skill. However, 58% believe that writing code from scratch will not be required in their roles in the future—meaning developers think the coding profession is headed toward tooling and compiling instead of composing.
To move toward a new standard of working, managers and leaders of development teams should carefully consider their toolchains, scrutinizing which tools to add and when. Developers want platforms and tools that are adaptable and that simplify their work, but these can be complex. Developers should have a voice in tool selection, especially as they navigate the transitional periods.
3. Flexibility is key when adopting more tools
Nearly 70% of developers say they’ve added more tools to their stack over time, and 61% are currently using six or more. Tool sprawl is impacting IT teams—and not always in a positive way. While tools can be helpful for planning, tracking and managing projects, having too many can create confusion and overload, leading to wasted effort, lost productivity and lack of efficiency.
The issue is not necessarily about just the number of tools that developers use; it’s about flexibility. Developers who have increased access to adaptable tools say this simplifies their work and makes them happier with their role and responsibilities. Developers burdened with inflexible tools, however, say the tools complicate their roles and require excessive maintenance.
4. The need for greater autonomy within development teams
Developers want to have more freedom over their work, and empowering employees with a sense of autonomy has the potential to improve job performance, motivation and productivity. In fact, developers who have more autonomy are happier, despite their job complexity.
Autonomy involves three major areas for developers—the tools they use, the projects they work on, and the ways they work. Teams working under the YBIYRI model have a greater sense of control over product outcomes. Developers with stronger autonomy are more likely to spend their time on code-related activities and learning new technical skills. And IT teams who have autonomy over selecting and implementing tools have greater job satisfaction.
Plus, giving developers more autonomy to boost their performance also benefits organizations by improving speed of delivery and agility. Only half of developers in the Atlassian survey said they have strong autonomy today, which means there’s room for improvement.
How an Atlassian Platinum Solution Partner Can Help Address the Trends
Understanding how developers prefer to work and what they want to work on is the first step. Next is finding the right platforms and tools to support these ideals. Atlassian offers a range of tools to support a distributed workforce that craves flexibility—from project or issue tracking in Jira to document collaboration capabilities in Confluence, and more. Tools like Forge can help developers simplify app development, unlocking innovation while alleviating complex tasks.
An Atlassian Solutions Partner like Contegix can help organizations integrate these platforms and improve new workflows by optimizing a team’s use of the tools. Whether an organization is working with Atlassian products for the first time or looking to adopt new tools or features to help give developers more flexibility, Contegix’s team of experts can help select, install and configure products to best support an organization and its development teams.
Learn more about how Contegix’s DevOps Services team provides support for many dev tools, allowing organizations to focus on driving business.