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Good developers are the lifeline of any successful software organization. Here are a few things that developers want to remain content and productive when creating software.
Developers want resources
Resources include hardware and software. Some poor developers work on a five year old system with a single 14 inch CRT monitor for GUI development!!! And if they want RAM above 1GB, they need a special request along with screen shots of why they do??? Same goes for the software required by the developers. Developers tend to enjoy playing around with the latest gadgets and software. Being in touch with the latest trends is a good thing for both the developers and the business. So provide developers with the resources that they want.
Developers want freedom from documents
Documentation is a good thing and most software developers tend to put it off. But how much documentation is really important. Following process oriented methodologies tend to require lots of documentation. Considering the fact that like software the documentation needs to be updated and that it will be obsolete the moment it is written, is that large pile of documentation really necessary? If the amount of time developers put in writing documentation is more than the time they spend working on software, something seems wrong somewhere. Advice is to write documentation which will be useful to you and your customers. Not more, not less.
Developers want incentives to work
Developers are easily satisfied people. Incentives don’t have to be just money. Developers enjoy to work with cool software and gadgets, so provide it to them. If you are a mobile based company, purchasing an iPhone, an N900 or a Nexus to tinker around with is a good incentive for developers. Incentives can be as simple as movie tickets or coffee mugs or those cool collectibles that developers keep on their desks. While the cost of such incentives is negligible, it makes the developers happy to work. Appreciation of the work that they put in is also a good incentive that makes developers happy.
Developers want a quiet working environment
Most working environments consist of a farm cubicle where developers sit near each other. The phone is ringing, people are shouting from one end to the other, music is playing on a computer. Considering the amount of concentration that developers need to get into the zone, it is quite easy to distract them with such things. And a noisy environment directly affects their productivity. Developers want a quiet working environment where they can concentrate on their work and create high quality software.
Developers want a say in the project schedule
Developers tend to get crabby when it comes to sticking to the project schedule. And in many cases rightly so because many a times the management creates a schedule along with the marketing team with no input from the developers. Developers are bugged by this method to no end. The result in most cases is that developers tend to get overworked and when that happens you get poor quality software. Fixing such software will take time any ways and your schedule will automatically be extended. So instead of that isn’t it better to consult the developers and get as much a realistic schedule as possible?
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Tags: development
Simple, developer wants the Programmer’s Bill of Rights to be honored.
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