Unleashing the Full Potential of Software Engineering Talent
McKinsey and Developer Velocity
What does Developer Velocity mean?
In a recent survey, McKinsey & Company moved on from the agile definition of “velocity,” to identify Developer Velocity as being a question, not just of speed, but rather of unleashing the full potential of development talent.
In creating the Developer Velocity Index (DVI), McKinsey considered a number of metrics as key. These included technical enablement, including development tools, DevOps tools, and collaboration tools, as well as the broader culture and talent-management approach. They also showed a clear connection between Developer Velocity and business performance, innovation, customer satisfaction, brand perception, and talent management.
According to McKinsey, companies which have mastered Developer Velocity, focus equally on empowering developers, anticipating critical enablers, aligning investments with customer value, and minimizing barriers to productivity. This, in turn, empowers developers to deliver value.
Interestingly, McKinsey’s research also came to the following conclusion:
“…best-in-class tools are the top contributor to business success … Yet only 5 percent of executives recognized this link and ranked tools among their top-three software enablers. The underinvestment in tools across the development life cycle is one reason so many companies struggle with ‘black box’ issues.”
This report caught my attention as it directly matches feedback from our customers in the data management and data analytics space, as well as in the networking industry e.g. routing/switching, software-defined data center (SDDC), SD-WAN, and Edge networking etc.
As one of these best-in-class tools — and a proven technology within the software debugging space — LiveRecorder plays a significant role in driving Developer Velocity.
Empowering Engineers to Drive Value
A best-of-breed approach
According to McKinsey, organizations with strong tools are 65 percent more innovative than bottom-quartile companies. Researchers also found that the ability to access relevant tools for each stage of the software lifecycle contributed directly to developer satisfaction and retention rates, which were 47 percent higher for top-quartile companies than bottom-quartile performers. McKinsey also made multiple references to best-in-class tools being the “…primary driver of Developer Velocity.”
There are many tools available for testing, source-code management, static checking, and CI/CD. However, there is one vital stage of the software development lifecycle (SDLC) for which there are very few existing tools. That is the software debugging stage.
While many engineers enjoy the challenge of bug resolution, the journey to bug reproduction is a common frustration. A study of over 70,000 developers[1] revealed complex spaghetti code as the number one pain point for senior engineers.
Throwing more engineers at the problem is not the solution; neither is asking your existing teams to work harder and longer hours. To remove these barriers to developer productivity, engineering leaders need to empower their engineers to work smarter. Investing in technology to do the work of several engineers makes sense if you are to enable them to catch and resolve defects faster and reduce the time it takes to get changes into the pipeline (past testing/QA).
Armed with our proven defect-resolution technology LiveRecorder, engineering leaders can now enable their engineers to rapidly resolve defects by providing them with a guaranteed reproducer which will accelerate bug-fix time by up to a factor of 200 (sometimes more).
Without strong productivity tools such as LiveRecorder empowering engineering teams, organizations simply cannot expect to achieve top-quartile status.
Unleashing the Full Potential of Software Engineers
Considerable expert engineering time is often spent trying to identify and reproduce a software defect. The stress created by the need to rapidly resolve such issues, and the time diverted away from the more rewarding and creative tasks of new feature development, are often seen as among the major reasons for high turnover in software engineering.
LiveRecorder ensures 100% reproducibility of a program run or failed process, allowing engineers to rapidly resolve even the most long-standing complex bugs that previously would have tied up a team of engineers, and cost much time and money. Junior or newly hired engineers are also empowered to fix issues that would previously have taken up the time of more experienced engineers.
LiveRecorder makes defect diagnosis and resolution predictable and removes the uncertainty around debugging. This innovative solution is a key driver in resource efficiency. By reducing time spent on debugging, engineering leaders can support and enhance their software engineers’ talents by creating the right environment for them to innovate, freeing up developers to focus on delivering value, while also reducing employee turnover.
McKinsey maintains that improving Developer Velocity is a journey, not a race. Providing tooling and infrastructure that enable Developer Velocity is the first step on that journey, producing unmistakable effects on positive business performance.
Using technology such as LiveRecorder, organizations can better position themselves toward the top quartile, by unleashing the full potential of their development talent.
To learn about LiveRecorder in more detail, visit the Undo website. Or feel free to reach out directly to me on LinkedIn if you’d like to arrange a call to discuss.
