Software Development Trends 2019: The tools being used today might become obsolete tomorrow. Our aim is to take an industry snapshot, track its evolution in the past and make a guess, where it would be leading ultimately.
To understand these changes and challenges, we have initiated to publish State of Software Development Report for 3 years.
2019 report not only provides you the data you will require to benchmark your activities against the participants. Keep yourself updated with the abrupt changes in the industry so that you can compare the changes to last few years data.
In this post, we will be highlighting 10 plus interesting stats.
What is included in the post?
- Challenges faced by the tech companies between 2018 and 2019?
- What is the primary programming language for your company (2018 vs 2019)?
- What will be your preferred programming language in the next 12 months?
- Which tools you will use for project management (2019)?
- Which tool you are using to communicate during a project?
- What is your most preferred criteria for hiring?
- What you do to motivate the developers?
- Are you outsourcing development partly or completely?
- How do you measure the developer performance?
- What are reasons for delivery problems within your team? Managers versus developers?
Software Development Management
The biggest challenges being faced by the tech companies in 2019 is related to the capacity i.e., when the backlog is full and you have to deliver the work with limited capacity.
We were curious to know the measures they are taking to overcome such challenges:
Capacity
The respondents are trying to overcome that problem in a number of ways. The most common one being to hire more people so that developers can finish more tasks.
Another significant improvement is the implementation of agile methods; and improving the overall productivity to meet the challenge.
Sharing knowledge
One of the most famous methods adopted by the developer is to share knowledge by holding a sharing session like lunches, meetings and seminar. Another ideal way can be to share it through the code reviews.
The data was split into two groups in 2018: managers and developers and since then the nature of these two job categories has been made entirely different, and the targets for both of them have also been set different.
One of the major challenges being faced by the developers comes with the knowledge sharing, that is followed by the capacity issue handling.
Things have been changed a bit since the last year dramatically.
The biggest challenge described by the developer respondents was to deal with the capacity issues. The second challenge was the time management for them.
According to the data from 2019, the top challenge faced by the managers was capacity, but the second one was related to hiring. It is most common things that managers have to handle it.
As compared to 2018, manager is finding really hard to deal with the capacity deficiency and hiring the suitable talent.
Software Development Outsourcing
Due to lack in the talent, the companies avail software development outsourcing to successfully deal with this challenge.
We asked a question: Have you ever gone for software development outsourcing fully or partly over the period of 12 months? About 33.44% of those who participated replied with yes.
Among those saying yes, the most of them were working with a software development company (57.355), 21.1 were freelancers while 21.45 were both doing full time job along with freelancing during the course of 12 months.
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Technology and Tools trends
Programming Languages
It is really very good to see that no the new programming languages are gaining momentum and rising up the ladder of popularity.
While comparing the data from 2019 to 2018, one can easily witness that things are changing abruptly.
The most widely used programming languages being used in 2018 was JavaScript, when 80.73% of the users are using it preferably.
Java and Python secure second and third place with 20.3% and 25.41% usage respectively.
In 019, JavaScript is still the most widely used programming language with a 54.24% of participants using it. The order is pretty much similar to 2018 with 34.96% using Java stands at second while Python being the third with 24.46% usage.
These are the current stats, but do you know where we are heading to? We are looking to sneak peek into the programming languages they intend to use over the period of 12 months
According to the stats from 2019, about 28.9% of the respondents are not planning to make use of any new programming over the course of 12 months. 27.73% of them are planning Python while 16.83% will use TypeScript and 17.41% have the intention to use Go.
Tools
A variety of tools are being used by the teams of developers (especially for testing and project management) making it really hard for them to present tools on a chart.
While looking at the chart, you can have a look at the category mentioned as “other” a way higher than everything. This category contains all the long-tail tools that have been used minimum by the respondents.
Below are the most widely used project managements, communication and SCM tools:
Project Communication tools being used by software development companies
Code versioning tools being used by software development firms in UK,USA & Canada & elsewhere in world.
How to hire and Retain talent
One of the critical parts of managing team of developers is to hire and retain them. The intention of the report is to present the fresh info for the tech leader being the essential part of the report.
The hiring procedure has not been changed since 2018. Employee referrals and in-house recruitment are the most effective way to hire and retain the talent.
Most important Hiring Criteria
Tech companies are focus on 4 important areas while hiring the talent, but it has not changed since 2018.
It is being perceived test project, side projects and soft skills are rather less important factors. Since the software development is changing abruptly, you must hire a person that is ready to learn some new technologies.
While talking about the new hiring, willingness to learn is 11 times more important and preferable than having an academic degree.
Methods adopted by the tech companies to keep software developers dedicated?
Great team culture and challenging working environment are the most popular ways to keep your developers motivated. This practice has not changed since 2018.
PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT
Do you know the difference between the top and average performing teams?
Let us discuss below:
How to measure software team performance?
It is really very difficult to express the developer performance in just one metric and there are a number of ways to approach for the performance assessment.
We have sliced the data and separated the high performance team from the average ones to find out the comparison between the two groups.
Apart from looking at the top and average performers, developers and managers work out to find the reasons for the delivery issues.
The difference is mainly due to the focus and nature of their responsibilities.
Conclusion
Comparison between the data has been made for the first time this year. We will keep publishing this report every year to see the industry developing according to the new trends.
Have some time? Visit our website or LinkedIn page to know more.
