Productivity challenges for Dev Teams

A new global study has revealed that most professional developers are experiencing some level of decreased productivity every week, which is costing significant time, with teams of 50 losing on average of 492 hours weekly, climbing to 651 hours for others. The findings comes from Stack Overflow’s 2022 Developer Survey, based on responses from 73,268 developers and engineers across the globe, which reveals a critical need for optimised knowledge-sharing and collaboration across businesses.

The major causes for this time lost include; coming up against knowledge silos, searching for answers and answering questions from other team members. This results in lost time that could be spent learning or building, regardless of role or seniority.

The survey also revealed that:

·      68% of respondents encounter a knowledge silo at least once per week

·      For people managers, often the more experienced developers, 73% report encountering a knowledge silo at least once per week

·      63% of all respondents spend more than 30 minutes a day searching for answers or solutions to problems, with 25% spending more than an hour each day

·      46% of all respondents spend more than 30 minutes a day answering questions

This is dire news in the context of current tech hiring challenges. A recent pulse survey of 500 developers revealed that, when choosing a new role, 53% of developers want the developer experience to be prioritized at work, 40% demand opportunities to learn from people outside of their team, and 33% find it appealing if the employer makes it easy to find experts within the company.

Collaboration revolutionises global businesses

According to the Forrester Total Economic Impact Report, one finance firm struggled with developers asking 1,500 questions every month – 85% of which were redundant. After implementing knowledge-sharing platform Stack Overflow for Teams, the firm reported only 250 questions per month, avoiding 1,275 repetitive, time-sapping questions blocking productivity.

One business which has benefited from the use of a knowledge sharing platform is Dropbox. The world-renowned data storage platform uses Stack Overflow for Teams as its main knowledge sharing hub and reports from fewer repeat questions and more knowledge reuse to building a company-wise culture of knowledge sharing as a result.

Among the positive outcomes of adopting a central knowledge-sharing platform, Dropbox cited:

·      More knowledge reuse: Fewer repeat questions, since users can easily search for and discover the knowledge they need

·      Improved work experience: Knowledgeable team members don’t have to spend hours (re)answering questions

·      Seamless onboarding: New employees get the information they need; new and outstanding questions are answered for the next cohort

·      Community health: Stack Overflow for Teams helps the community self-moderate and makes knowledge sharing an integral part of the Dropbox community.