Modern organizations increasingly rely on software to run their businesses.
In this article, we will examine engineering developer productivity by covering several interrelated aspects:
In order to increase developer productivity, software teams should lay the groundwork collectively;
A few main points to take away from the article;
From the perspective of business agility, developer productivity is important.
In the final section of this post, we will highlight the main takeaway points from each of these individual aspects.
Engineering Developer Productivity Is Important
Why is developer productivity so important?
According to my own experience, developer productivity can be summarized as follows:
It is a combination of institutional processes and technology stacks, as well as a technology landscape, that enables software engineers and teams to optimize the business value they can produce for their companies.
Last but not least, developer productivity is all about enabling your developers to provide the most value while on the job.
This is particularly critical for organizations operating in today's business environment, relatively high corporations or startups that need to increase market share quickly in order to stay competitive.
In order to do this efficiently, you should deliver new features quickly and be agile at responding to changing customer expectations.
Development teams and their leaders can be powerful force multipliers when they are empowered to be productive and adaptable to customer needs.
We will now discuss how we can put empowerment and productivity into practice.
How to Become a High-Performing Developer?
Following are three perspectives on developer productivity:
Implementing established processes
Taking part in meetings with clients and relevant stakeholders
Increasing the productivity of developers
Let's dig a little deeper into each of these subjects and examine some tried-and-true industry practices that you can implement right away to boost your developer productivity.
Concentrate on one task at a time: The best way to reduce technical debt is to focus on one task deeply for an extended period of time rather than trying to juggle several possibly more shallow tasks.
Make sure you block time in your calendar for focus time: When you need to take control of your own time to focus or define critical meetings with certain stakeholders, it's incredibly effective yet simple.
You will be able to better control your own time if you follow these two rules.
Your time will be well-spent on deep, focused, uninterrupted work on things that matter rather than on things that don't.
Empower developers to be more productive by following established team processes
We need to zoom out from the individual IC perspective and look at the team and process as a whole in order to increase developer productivity.
Software development teams should strive to achieve success.
Ad-Hoc Practices in General
The following are some of these practices, along with their motivations:
Enhancing developer productivity through optimization of enablers. In the context of developers' productivity, enablers include all the things that can help them deliver maximum value with the least amount of effort.
It is important to consider the working environment as well. When working remotely, developers must be able to focus without interruptions. Developers who work from home should have a separate room or division exclusively for their work.
It is also crucial for managers and developers to hold regular one-on-one meetings. In these meetings, feedback has been exchanged both ways. The developer can tell the manager if the work they are doing is good or bad. As a result, managers can assess developers' engagement and, if necessary, propose refocusing their efforts elsewhere.
Goals and expectations should be clearly set: nothing matters how fast you go if you don't know where to go. You will be more productive and efficient when you know what you want to accomplish and do the work in a single-minded manner to achieve your goal.
CONCLUSION
Modern software development places a high value on developer productivity.
Several comments were made throughout the article regarding how productivity may be achieved through several lenses, ranging from the perspective of individual engineers to how a team interacts with their DevOps group and manages their workflows.
The following are the most important lessons to be learned:
Productivity can be measured on many levels, and we can obtain the best results if all levels are synchronized.
A developer's productivity is heavily influenced by technology choices and code architecture.
Increasing or enabling productivity can only be achieved by establishing a productive engineering culture within the organization. As part of the organization's values, productivity must be a top priority.