The last few years have been disruptive for engineering teams. With a haphazard, but necessary shift to remote work, teams are still adjusting with the constantly changing engineering ecosystem. Despite companies like Dell, and Walmart calling engineering back to the office, remote work is still on the rise with 48% of employees allowing distributed work for their teams.
Engineering demand is still swelling in terms of requested features, and complex product updates while the supply of the talent pool remains limited, and in fact, scarce. The tech talent pool too presented a structural trichotomy- engineering layoffs, mass hirings and great resignation going hand in hand. Most organizations including Google and Meta hired more and more devs as a measure to counter demand, and reach potential output, but in vain.
As teams went through the interactions of hiring, resigning, and layoffs- they realized the real problem was not the dearth of resources, but lack of visibility into developer workflow, low engineering productivity, redundant, and badly run processes, and stunted developer experience. These issues further snowballed as critical vulnerabilities kept getting exploited, while 80% of IT resources were spent on firefighting.
Another issue plaguing the tech community has been developer burnout. Developers, despite being a critically important asset for organizations, felt overburdened with unsustainable workload, and even underwent chronic stress tendencies.
These pandemic years brought a lot of crests and troughs for engineering organizations, with the critical lesson—take care of your engineering resources (both people, and processes) before it's too late.
In the current landscape, it is critical to engage in thought-provoking discussions around data-driven engineering workflows. Furthermore, there exists a compelling need for a comprehensive platform that seamlessly integrates all aspects of the software development process, catering to developers, engineering managers, tech leads, and C-suite executives.
It is now time for engineering teams to think about a tipping-point technology— an engineering management platform to help them plug developmental loopholes, while working towards developer well-being.
Engineering Management Platforms: Is the Hype Real?
Last year made huge strides in the typical outlook of CTOs, and directors of engineering in using engineering management platforms. They went from “I might use this platform because my EM recommends” to “I need this tool for end-to-end visibility into the workflows,” even personally investing themselves into their developer success. It’s safe to say that Engineering Management Platforms have become a strategic topic for most C-suite execs.
But what makes an engineering management platform so critical to engineering success today, you may ask?
An engineering management platform enables data-driven transformation of engineering teams through bringing operational efficiency, optimized resource allocation, accelerated time to market, and breakdown of developmental silos. In the last two years, 77% of high-performing teams have used management platforms to track engineering progress, and fulfill development milestones. The number speaks for itself and shows the trust engineering leaders put in data analytics.
The last few years surely paved the way for leaders to start using engineering management platforms. However, they haven’t yet tapped the full potential of work analytics, and management– thus a call for EMPs to reach their full potential.
9 Benefits of Using an Engineering Management Platform
Teams need to enter into a full-fledged engineering management year.
Let’s see why teams should use an engineering management platform.
1. Resource-cost optimization for C-sec executives
The recent years have been tough for the market, especially when trying to extract sufficient RoI from an expensive, and uneconomical developmental process. In some cases, it has even cost as much as 63% of a project’s budget.
Any company has limited resources, but unlimited software requirements: constant upgrades, ongoing maintenance, frequent firefighting, KTLO, unplanned work, and iterative development. Currently, only 8% of companies have successfully met their business goals using their ongoing engineering methods. Without data-backed insights, engineering investments are at the risk of getting pulled towards abstraction, with more time and resources spent on unplanned, or over the surface work- bringing no to minimal value to real project goals.