What application developers really want

Quite a lot of developers read InfoWorld. So, recently, we surveyed nearly 500 of them to get an idea of their challenges and aspirations. The survey, which also tapped visitors of our sister publications JavaWorld and IT World, was conducted over 19 days in August by IDG Research — and turned up some interesting results.

First of all, I was surprised by how much the developers spend — or, rather, have influence over purchasing. The mean amount was $212,000 in programming products and services over the last 12 months, even though only 16 percent of the respondents identified themselves as managers.

[ Contributing editor Neil McAllister’s Fatal Exception blog tackles the big app dev issues every week. | Subscribe to InfoWorld’s Developer World newsletter and keep up with app dev trends. ]

Who says developers have no power?

This unexpected influence over where the money goes was flanked by less-welcome news. When asked to estimate how much their company spent in the last 12 months on outsourcing, the mean was a whopping $290,000. That number rose by a couple of percentage points when respondents were asked to predict next year’s outsourcing spend.

Another surprise was the scale of these developers’ ambitions. A full 68 percent said they aspired to be an application or enterprise architect, and nearly one in five thought they wanted to become “CIO/head of IT,” as the survey put it.

Actually, I’ve interviewed a number of CTOs and CIOs who came up through the developer track, and (with all due respect to others) they frequently seemed to have the firmest grasp on what their operation’s challenges and opportunities were. The developer as withdrawn geek bereft of leadership qualities is a stereotype that deserves retirement.

The answers to the most telling question, “What are the top challenges you feel the developer community is facing?” didn’t surprise me at all. Here’s the breakdown:

Incomplete or garbled business requirements are the bane of enterprise application development, so no wonder the respondents picked “proper communication” of those requirements as the biggest obstacle. Tools for creating prototypes and programming methodologies that encourage business/developer collaboration just seem to get better year after year. But collaboration also takes sustained effort — and demands that stakeholders take the time to nail down business processes and decide what they really want. Unfortunately, that part never seems to get easier, especially when a recession reduces staff.

Speaking of the downturn, it may seem puzzling that nearly half of respondents lamented the lack of “experienced, talented developers” when so many are looking for work. But it has always been this way. There may be a large pool of unemployed developers, but not that many who can hack EJBs, sling Python code — or meet the specific needs of any individual environment.

Overall, the survey results suggest that developers have a clear sense of their importance to the IT organization and the business as a whole. But in today’s market, the threat of outsourcing means programming skills alone aren’t enough to ensure success. Those who can bridge the gap between IT and business always rise to the top.

This article, “What application developers really want,” originally appeared at InfoWorld.com. Read more of Eric Knorr’s Modernizing IT blog and get a digest of the key stories each day in the InfoWorld Daily newsletter and on your mobile device at infoworldmobile.com.