Mattermost Unveils New Software Developer Research Report: The 2023 Guide to Developer Productivity

Mattermost, the leading secure collaboration platform for technical teams, announced the launch of its authoritative research on the state of software developer productivity. The report, entitled “The 2023 Guide to Developer Productivity,” details survey responses from more than 300 developers, technical and operational team leads, and open source maintainers.

As organizations attempt to balance the pressures placed on developers and technical talent for more rapid development with a desire to retain top performers, successful organizations will focus on improving collaboration as a key driver of both developer productivity and satisfaction. The guide seeks to enable these organizations to do so by answering four critical questions:

• What does “developer productivity” mean?
• How has the state of developer productivity changed over the last year?
• What productivity challenges will keep teams from reaching their full potential in 2023?
• How can highly effective teams continue to improve collaboration and accelerate technical productivity?

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In addition to offering insight to the factors impacting developer workflows, the survey also revealed several common barriers to developer productivity. Some of the key findings of the survey include:

• Poor communication is the biggest obstacle to team productivity.
  • 29% of respondents indicated that poor communication is their primary challenge to efficient software development, followed by lack of alignment around goals (22%).
• Interruptions and external distractions cause frustration and interrupt workflows
  • 37% of respondents said that they experience “too many distractions from non-developers.”
• Information silos limit the flow of vital information and keep developers from collaborating effectively.
  • Most developers (86%) reported that they lose between 1-8 hours looking for information they need each week, with nearly one-third (32%) wasting between 3-5 hours a week.
• Tool fragmentation and lack of integration challenge about half of all developers.
  • 45% of developers would prefer better integration between tools in their stack and 25% indicated that collaboration tools don’t fit well into developer workflows.

Ultimately, these findings demonstrate a need for purpose-built, developer-compatible tools that foster real-time collaboration, minimize distraction from non-technical teams and offer flexible integration environments to support development needs. Organizations can address this challenge by optimizing IT stacks and leveraging open-source tools to simplify complex workflows.

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“The conclusions from the Guide clearly indicate that collaboration challenges, whether impacted by knowledge silos, workflow bottlenecks, or an overall lack of alignment, is the greatest challenge for developers seeking to be more productive and efficient ,” said Ian Tien, CEO and co-founder of Mattermost. “Organizations must do their part in mitigating these barriers to productivity and adopt tools that are purpose-built to enhance the developer experience.”

Moving forward, respondents shared their next steps to overcome the highlighted challenges to developer productivity by focusing on:

• “Stronger and more effective integration across disparate tools and platforms.”
  • Executive-level software engineer
• “The encouragement of frequent communication with teams and leadership.”
  • IT operations director
• “We are focusing on a smaller number of tools and more open source solutions.”
  • Executive-level software engineer
• “We are missing the ability to set milestones for our development projects, which hinders us in hitting them.”
  • IT operations senior management
• “We are aiming to have developers work to become more proficient in less tools, making their work more collaborative and cooperative.”
  • IT operations middle management
• “We are trying to develop a way to have all of our systems speak to each other.”
  • Senior management-level software engineer
• “Spend more time and effort on improving processes and reporting more accurately.”
  • IT operations middle management
• “Consolidate or integrate all tools in use for effective collaboration and communication and probably procure another tool that can address our current gaps.”
  • Director-level software engineer

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