Atlassian Corporation, one of the leading providers of team collaboration and productivity software and the maker of Jira, Confluence, Bitbucket and Trello products, has released its first-ever global State of the Developer report. According to the findings, higher autonomy leads to happier developers at work, despite more frequent context switching and increased job complexity. Developers who have more autonomy spend more time coding and can work on a broader range of goods and services.
The survey reveals significant trends in how developers’ views and preferences toward their job have changed over the last year, such as the rise of ‘You build it, you run it’ (YBIYRI) as a practice. YBIYRI is an increasingly common software development methodology with almost 60 percent of teams currently working this way. Teams working in YBIYRI require new and diverse roles, especially when they are transitioning into practice.
A look at India’s developer ecosystem
The research shows that autonomy levels for developers globally are high, with 50 percent claiming strong autonomy. Additionally, stronger autonomy correlates with positive feelings about work, and autonomy is at its highest in the US and India (57 percent and 56 percent respectively) and lowest in Germany (29 percent).
It was observed that tool sprawl could be the worst in India with 78 percent of developers saying they are using more than six tools. In the US, this number is 72 percent while only half of the developers in Germany (50 percent) use more than six tools.
What should leaders consider when building and managing development teams?
The research demonstrates that increased autonomy makes coders happier at work. Furthermore, developers that have more liberty tend to spend more time coding and can work on a larger variety of goods and services. Developers with 6–10 years of experience, in larger companies (250–1000 workers), and in YBIYRI teams have the most autonomy. Developers are taking more responsibility — The rise of YBIYRI as a practice has seen development teams doing more to support the code they work with. The research shows almost 60 percent of developers now work this way, with a larger number agreeing that they should be responsible for more of the software product lifecycle than they currently are (over 65 percent). Developers who are close to a product or service have the potential to improve it further when given a high degree of ownership. Engineering leaders should create more space for development teams to take on YBIYRI responsibilities, ensuring they have the right tools, processes, and rituals to be successful.
Coding or tooling is a matter of preference — Two-thirds of developers (65 percent) say that writing new code is the most valuable skill in their role, while 74 percent feel that being able to read code is vital. Yet 58 percent of developers don’t feel that writing code from scratch will be required as part of their roles in the future, and 51 percent say they mainly assemble code written by others. Managers and team leaders should let developers lean into those preferences rather than dictating “how things are done around here.”
Fewer tools aren’t necessarily better — The majority of developers (almost 70 percent) are using more tools to complete their work than ever before, which isn’t always a bad thing. The importance of tool flexibility cannot be overstated. Those who use more flexible tools report that it simplifies their job and makes them happy in their roles, whereas those who use an increasing number of inflexible tools risk tool sprawl. Almost half of the developers polled feel they have a stable toolchain (46 percent ). The remainder has expanded the number of tools, either with flexible tools (38 percent) or inflexible tools (38 percent) (16 percent).
There’s no one-size-fits-all approach
The future of software development is one of greater autonomy. This means that developers have more freedom to choose which tools they use, what they work on, and how that work is completed.
Atlassian is committed to facilitating this alignment and autonomy for teams of all sizes. With the recent launch of Compass, a new Atlassian initiative for creating new products in conjunction with clients, developers are moving beyond coding and are given the freedom to link the tools they wish to utilize.
Originally published at https://itvarnews.techplusmedia.com on May 7, 2022.
