Be a Happy Developer

6 min readSep 11, 2018

Fig:- https://pixabay.com/en/adult-break-business-caucasian-2449725/#_=_

One study found that happy employees are up to 20% more productive than unhappy employees. When it comes to salespeople, happiness has an even greater impact, raising sales by 37%. But the benefits don’t end there.

TL;DR: Some good approaches for the developer’s happiness which increase productivity in the work. Some of them are to take a break, motivate yourself, communicate well, do not jump on dark, make better burndown chart, More Knowledge Transfers Sessions.

So, happiness is linked to productivity. But what does it mean to be “happy” in the workplace?

Developers need to be happy and there are some tips for the developers who want to become fully happy.

1. Motivate yourself

Those people who are around you can motivate you by appreciating your work. The team can suggest or even assist you in some of your work which will increase your efficiency. So always respect your team and motivate yourself..

What are the things you may need to motivate yourself?

You may need time to become perfect
Always keep in mind that people smarter than yourself had got stuck on easier things then you’re currently on.

Celebrate your accomplishments
It’s obvious that you will get some sort of success and accomplishments from time to time, Just celebrate that moment. Even Small Celebration makes you more motivated.

Correction on mistakes
It’s obvious you may make mistakes time to time, You must learn from mistakes and try not to repeat same mistakes next time.

Focus on few things at a time
Do not focus on too many things at a time, Focus on a few things and make that thing successful.

Daily and monthly plan
Set a daily plan and try to accomplish the plan, then you will have an idea about how much velocity do you have to burn the stories from sprint. Likewise, make a monthly plan and try to accomplish all set plans for the month.

2. Flexible Working Environment

If you have a tight schedule of work that thing obviously gives you more stress. Make environment such a way that work is kind of fun. If you overwork that may adds some stress as well as may reduce your productivity.

How can I manage flexible working environment?

Take frequent break
You have to take a break from the regular work time to time. You may experience a situation such that you are stuck on a problem and then you took some sort of break and take some fresh air. Then somehow your mind found the solution. Frequent breaks may be gone for a walk, take a snack, daydream, what’s happening on twitter etc.

Add time for testing, documentation and automation
These works are really needed for the developers because these works may developer’s life easier as well as relax. Separate time to do those works that really makes you happy.

3. Communicate well

In software industry communication is the basic required skill, most of the developers are introvert so they do not talk with other people or hesitate to communicate with people. But developers should communicate properly with the team.

How can I communicate well?

Be proactive for communication
Don’t be hesitate to ask or anything to the team, proactively reply message and emails whichever you received and required. If you stuck in any problem then ask for the help.

Be open to the team
Whatever you are working team should know about it, Provide your daily update to the team more clarity and detail. If you are planning to critical bug fixes or anything critical things related to system let the team know about your plan.

The written copy of proof
For any business decision, you should have to make the written copy of proof so that it can be saved as a reference. People may forget own decision in near future so such much time you wouldn’t be in the trap.

Handle worse situation
Technology Crisis such as Network Failure, Server Issues, Security Breaches, Personal Crises can be fixed by the good communication.

4. Don’t Jump on dark

Please do not jump on dark because we really need to be clear on the things to make the software better.

Pick stories after you understand it
If the requirement is not well understood by the developer then the features came from the developer may differ from the expected outcome, that also may kill your precious time.

Groom stories in detail
Before planning of any stories, you have to groom the backlog stories yourself, during the grooming time if you have any questions then ask the team or any of product stake holder if required and be clear.

Take all details during handover
If someone hands over an existing project to you and you are the new developers then that time you should understand a whole lot of things about the project like database structure, External API, Third Party integration, Used Frameworks and tools, Code style and architecture, alert monitoring and logging of the system process etc.

Add buffer time
During the planning to work separate some sort of buffer time for the unplanned task. There may come some sort of work for you like high priority bugs, Issues on a production server, network issues so ready for it. If there are no any surprises you can pick other stories during the time.

5. Make Better Burndown Chart

High Priority tasks should be picked first, that priority always decided by the Product Owner. And the main challenge for the developer is to complete and release the features in decided time.

Generate values of the product
You are a developer and providing the business solutions, So think about the business values of the product too. Always pick high priority task defined by the PO.

Are you sure to about the story?
Sometimes some stories and bugs are quite confusing but need to fix. You may not know how much time and effort need to fix the issue at first glance, in such situation pick analysis task only so that it helps to fix the issue better way and you can burn story in time for next time.

6. You Need More KT Sessions

You need more KT(Knowledge Transfer) session from time to time. You should learn from the other developers and other team members as well as you should whatever you learned from the project.

Why you need more KT?

To become cross-functional
To fit in the team and become cross functional you may need Knowledge Transfer session from the different designated teams.

Share your knowledge to team
You can also provide some sort of KT session with the team and can share your knowledge across the team. As well as attending other team member’s KT session you can ask some questions, share your experience so that team will be benefited.

To quick learn from the team
You can learn quickly from the team members by attending Knowledge Transfer sessions effectively. Some sort of peer programming also helps you to become more knowledgeable.

7. Tell the impediments to the Team

Minimize technical debt constantly, You may take few tasks to fix the technical debt or continuous tech stacks update. Let the team know about the importance of the task. What kinds of problems may arise if we won’t accomplish those tasks?

Whatever you have
Let the team know whatever impediments you are facing during the time of working so that such kind of impediments resolved easily and can be minimized for the future too.

Stories to reduce technical debt
Obviously, there is some sort of technical debt in any product, So add some time to reduce technical debt. Also, make clear to the product team about this and why technical debt needs to minimize and why necessary to do it by developers.

Time for update dependencies
System dependencies need to update time to time because new version contains security fixes, easier to integrate, a lot of improvement etc.

Conclusion: Our industry needs more happy developers, Great developers are Happy developers.

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