close
close

Developer Productivity Is Poorly Understood, Report Says

Posted on by darion

Developer productivity is neither well understood nor enabled, according to Atlassian’s recently released State of Developer Experience Report 2024. The report also found that interest in developer experience, or DX, is growing, but efforts are lagging.

Announced July 15 and available on atlassian.com, the State of Developer Experience Report 2024 is based on a survey of 1,250 engineering leaders in the U.S., Germany, France, and Australia, and 900 developers worldwide. The study sought to determine what practices make software development workflows smooth and what practices introduce friction. It also assessed perceptions of work environments in the era of generative AI and microservices. Among the findings were that fewer than half of developers believe their organizations prioritize developer experience, and two in three developers lose more than eight hours per week due to inefficiencies in their roles. Additionally, two in three developers have yet to see significant productivity gains from using AI tools.

The top five factors contributing to the complexity of the developer role, according to engineering leaders, are understaffing, expanding the developer role, new technology, context switching between tools, and collaborating with other teams. The top five factors contributing to developer time loss are technical debt, insufficient documentation, build processes, lack of time for deep work, and lack of clear direction. Almost all surveyed engineering leaders, 99%, agree that the developer role has become more complex. The top five practices that leaders say will increase developer productivity and satisfaction are AI automation, providing new tools for collaboration, taking risks and experimenting, streamlining decision-making, and hosting hackathons.

Other findings from the 2024 State of Developer Experience Report:

  • 12% of survey participants believe that AI tools will not increase developer productivity in the next two years.
  • 51% of organizations focus on measuring developer productivity, while 49% focus on developer satisfaction.
  • 41% of leaders use developer productivity tools to assess the satisfaction of their development teams.
  • 38% of organizations measure developer productivity based on hours worked.