The Social Future of Software Development

The (Social) Future Of Software Development
Close Your Developer Gap By Appealing To Developers’ Social Side
by Jeffrey S. Hammond
May 4, 2016
For Application Development & Delivery Professionals
forrester.com
Key Takeaways
AD&D Leaders Must Respond To Developers’
Social Demands
Developers are investing in their own self-
supporting communities. AD&D leaders must
choose whether to get in the way or get with the
program and support their efforts.
Developers Demand Work That Makes A
Difference
As creative, intrinsically motivated professionals,
developers demand meaning from their work.
Create a shared purpose that validates their efforts,
or watch them apply their creativity elsewhere.
The Software Factory Model Isn’t Compatible
With Customer-Obsessed Software
Heavyweight processes, top-down organizations,
and a focus on cost control impede high-
performance development. Shops that trash their
development culture risk digital mediocrity.
Why Read This Report
Application development and delivery (AD&D)
leaders are facing a crisis in the kitchen: There
don’t seem to be enough top chefs to go around.
A gap exists between the supply of good
developers and the demand for their services.
It’s a seller’s market, which makes it important
to build a shop culture that helps recruit and
retain creative developers. To do so, focus on
the increasingly social nature of developers, and
support their efforts to form communities, create
shared purpose for their work, and change what
they don’t like about the industry status quo.

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Table Of Contents
Who Will Make The Software That Eats The
World?
Fierce Competition Puts Top Developers In
The Catbird Seat
High-Performing Developers Want More Than
Top-Dollar Term Sheets
Developers Are Going Social, And It’s
Changing How They Work
Social Development Is The Outgrowth Of
Developers’ Communities And Causes
Rebuild Development Culture To Retain
Social Developers
Recommendations
Rebuild Your Culture By Embracing Social
Development
What It Means
The Democratization Of Software
Development
Supplemental Material
Notes & Resources
Forrester interviewed more than 30 companies
and developer communities, including 10x
Management, Acquia, ADP, Appirio, AT&T,
Catalyst DevWorks, CI&T, CodeMontage,
Devoxx, EPAM, Gigster, Girl Develop It, Girls
Who Code, GitHub, Google, Hear Me Code, IBM,
Intel, KPMG, MongoDB, Mutual Mobile, NCI,
Pivotal, Progress Software, Quilted, Schneider
Electric, Solstice Mobile, SourceForge, TrackVia,
WillowTree, and Women Who Code.
Related Research Documents
Best Practices: Building High-Performance
Application Development Teams
Brief: Recruit Top Developers By Appealing To
Their Social Side
Developer Conferences Speed Your Transition To
Modern Application Development
by Jeffrey S. Hammond
with Christopher Mines and Claudia Tajima
May 4, 2016

May 4, 2016
© 2016 Forrester Research, Inc. Unauthorized copying or distributing is a violation of copyright law.
Citations@forrester.com or +1 866-367-7378
2
Who Will Make The Software That Eats The World?
It’s an increasingly accepted meme: Software is eating the world, and so every company is a software
company.1
But where does software come from? It’s doesn’t (yet) spring fully formed from self-
programming automatons, and it’s not mined out of the earth and forged at the mill. Software comes
from the minds of developers, who translate ideas and intellectual property into code. Developers are
the chefs that keep digital businesses fully sated.
But many AD&D leaders are facing a crisis in the kitchen: There don’t seem to be enough top chefs to
go around. Here’s why:
›› Hiring managers can’t find the talent they need. In a survey fielded by the Technology Councils
of North America in 2014, 83% of US and Canadian respondents agreed that there is a shortage
of software development professionals. Just over half (51%) cited an inadequate supply of local
talent.2
And it’s not just a North American problem. It’s easy to find examples of tight supply in
European markets as well.3
›› University computer science programs barely match the market’s demand. US employers
will need to fill 485,400 software development and computer programming job openings due
to growth or replacement in the decade from 2014 to 2024.4
But the most recent reported data
by the National Science Foundation’s 2014 Science and Engineering Indicators shows that US
undergraduate computer science programs awarded approximately 56,000 degrees in 2014.5
That’s barely enough to meet market demand, even if 100% of those graduates stay in the US, take
a job in the field, and are perfectly distributed to match the geographic demands of hiring firms.
›› Software-driven firms all want above-average talent. More and more companies rely on
software to reach and engage their customers and define and differentiate their products. So
executives charge their recruiting teams with the task of creating the development shop equivalent
of Lake Wobegon, where all the kids are above average. This drive for top development talent is
especially true at firms that look at software development as a creative profession or companies
that sell software products or software services.6
Fierce Competition Puts Top Developers In The Catbird Seat
The corporate competition that’s opened up for top developers is made worse by a growing realization
that there’s wide variation in developer skills and productivity. Independent software vendors (ISVs)
and design agencies aggressively pursue creative “Type I” developers in ways that are more akin to
the entertainment or professional sports industries than those used to hire assembly line workers. It’s a
seller’s market for developers with the right skills.
Application development leaders who aren’t hustling early and often to sign the right recruits aren’t just
losing the game — they often find the outcome was largely decided before they even hit the court to
compete. Aggressive recruiting tactics are particularly at play when it comes to attracting new talent.
The signs of the times:

May 4, 2016
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›› Developer salaries are high, even for new graduates. Developer salaries are well above the
mean in the United States. In 2014, the mean wage for application developers was $95,510, while
the national mean wage was $47,230.7
Even freshly minted computer science graduates do better,
with an average starting salary of more than $56,000.8
›› Recruiting happens early and often. Recruiting for top talent starts early. It’s not hard to find
freshmen and sophomore computer science candidates with multiple internship offers to choose
from, many of which include the cost of summer housing. And the competition only gets more
intense as they advance toward commencement.
“I’ve already had more than 25 recruiters contact me to interview for software intern positions this
summer, and it’s only November.” (Computer science student, MIT class of 2017)
›› Companies value experience over credentials. While most enterprise shops demand computer
science degrees from accredited universities, others are more flexible. At one Boston startup we
spoke with, front-end development is run by a 22-year-old, first-year college dropout, because
with four years of mobile and JavaScript experience, he’s a veritable veteran.9
In 2014, one of
our own research associates transitioned into development by joining Quilted, a worker-owned,
cooperatively managed company stitching together technology and social change in Berkeley,
California. Now she’s a full-time web developer at the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
›› Some developers are hiring agents . . . Talent agents have caught on to demand for top
developers and are looking to represent the best. The founders of New York-based 10x
Management are former entertainment industry managers who represent a select group of carefully
screened developers, data scientists, designers, and security professionals. They charge their
developer clients a percentage of the deals they strike but offer services that allow their developer
clients to focus on what they love: writing challenging code — for good pay. The model seems to
be working, as 10x has a long waiting list for representation and a blue-chip customer list.
›› . . . while others are working under their own rules. New-generation services firms like Appirio,
Gigster, uTest, and Upwork connect clients with highly skilled developers for assignments that
range from days to months. While many developers in these communities use their services to
supplement income from their day jobs, there’s also a group that does gig work full-time, enjoying
lifestyle flexibility in the process.
“As an Appirio Topcoder copilot, I love making my own schedule. I have more time to travel, and I
can be geographically independent.” (Luis Millàn, Topcoder copilot)
High-Performing Developers Want More Than Top-Dollar Term Sheets
Corporate battles for top talent are nothing new; they’ve been around as long as noncompete
agreements. For years, Wall Street has lured finance and math majors from tony East Coast private
colleges and universities with large bonuses meant to incent sustained death marches of 100-hour
workweeks. There’s no shortage of Silicon Valley software shops offering stock grants or top-of-

May 4, 2016
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market salaries to lure top developer talent into grind-it-out development initiatives. But many of
the top developers we’ve spoken with want more than a great salary, free food, foosball tables, and
a LimoLiner to and from the office. That’s right, these high performers are increasingly picking their
employer, not the other way around. Creative developers crave:
›› Autonomy instead of control. Creative developers demand the ability to choose the tools and
techniques they will use to complete the tasks you set before them. That’s one reason they tend
to gravitate toward companies with established agile practices and smaller startup shops. Netflix
allows developers to choose their own individual tools and focuses standardization efforts on
team-level tools that foster collaboration. Modern application practices like Agile development,
continuous delivery, and feedback-driven minimum viable product approaches can go a long way
toward pushing up the lever on autonomy.10
›› The opportunity to master what matters. Athletes get better by practicing, musicians get better
by playing, and developers get better by writing code. In his book Outliers: The Story of Success,
Malcolm Gladwell observes that practice is one secret to success, noting that the Beatles, Mozart,
Bill Gates, and Bill Joy all had more than 10,000 hours of practice at their chosen craft before they
made it big.11
That’s one reason developers spend their own time writing code — it keeps their
skills sharp (see Figure 1). Also, initiatives like Google’s 20% time or Atlassian’s ShipIt days and
introducing modern programming languages, microservice architectures, and mobile apps can help
increase the mastery opportunities in your shop.
›› A shared purpose for their work. Dig into the motivations of creative development professionals,
and you’ll find that their craft, and the impact it makes, matters to them. That’s one reason we see
developers of all types contributing time to volunteer organizations like Code for America Labs,
Women Who Code, CodeMontage, and Girl Develop It.
“We frequently have developers walk through the door almost in a midlife crisis. They’ve spent years
writing code, and they’re well paid. They are comfortable, but they don’t think their work has had
much social meaning. Now they want to make a difference.” (Vanessa Hurst, founder and CEO,
CodeMontage)

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FIGURE 1 81% Of Developers Spend Personal Time Writing Code
“On average, how many hours a week do you spend programming personal or side projects
not related to your day job?”
I do not program or develop on my
own time outside my day job.
19%
Less than 5
hours a week
30%
Between 5 and 10
hours a week
28%
Between 11 and 20
hours a week
15%
More than 20
hours a week
8%
Base: 1,867 global developers
Source: Forrester’s Global Business Technographics®
Developer Survey, 2016
Four out of ﬁve developers regularly code on their own time1-1

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FIGURE 1 81% Of Developers Spend Personal Time Writing Code (Cont.)
“Why do you spend your own time developing applications/websites?”
3%
36%
36%
38%
44%
46%
56%
62%
64%
65%
Other (please specify)
To become a professional developer someday/again
I contribute to open source projects
I contribute to a civic organization or charity
I’m developing an idea for my own company
To improve the productivity of others
I like the idea of creating an application and selling it
To add innovative solutions into my daily life
To improve my own productivity at work
As part of a personal hobby or pastime
I generally enjoy programming about new technologies
To keep my skills sharp by learning new technologies
Base: 1,509 global developers
(multiple responses accepted)
Source: Forrester’s Global Business Technographics®
Developer Survey, 2016
External motivation Intrinsic motivation
Developers code on their own time for many reasons1-2
51%
44%
Developers Are Going Social, And It’s Changing How They Work
We’ve all seen the media stereotypes of developers: heads buried in code, working off-hours, sealed
away in offices or cube-land. Just keep shoving pizza and Red Bull under the door, and let them go at
it. And you wouldn’t want to spend a lot of time trying to socialize with them, as their personal interface
often isn’t that polished — they don’t dress well, suffer tech illiterates lightly, or seem to care much
about what the larger world thinks about them. Conventional wisdom suggests giving them the tools
they need to work and leaving them alone. That conventional wisdom couldn’t be more wrong. We
find that top developers, despite their quirks, are surprisingly social — it’s a core component of what
motivates them and the choices they make (see Figure 2).

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FIGURE 2 A Developer’s Hierarchy Of Needs
Source: Abraham H. Maslow, A Theory of Human Motivation, CreateSpace Publishing Platform, 1943
A developer’s hierarchy of needs
5. I use my development skills
for greater good.
4. I’m a top-ﬂight developer, as
judged by my wealth, power, or
inﬂuence over others.
3. I’m a [.NET/Java/Web/OSS]
developer — part of a group.
2. I invest in my career to keep my
opportunities open.
1. I write code for a living.
Self-
actualization
Social needs
Physiological needs
Esteem needs
Safety needs
Wi-Fi
Social Development Is The Outgrowth Of Developers’ Communities And Causes
Developers are not immune to the groundswell of social technologies that have shifted consumer
habits and employee collaboration.12
But the ways that developers use social technologies are
subtly different from consumers or information workers. As “makers,” developers gravitate toward
digital and physical communities that reinforce their propensity to create. The impact of developers’
collaborative “making” is already shifting how digital innovation happens. Here’s how developers
create social communities:
›› Open source projects create self-directed communities with shared purpose. Popular open
source projects are developers’ digital equivalent of a New England town common — a place
for them to share resources, collaborate on shared interests, and collectively create tools that
serve their needs. The big difference: They aren’t limited by time or geography. The result is self-
alignment of developer collaboration by interest or problem.
“With Drupal, our tagline is ‘come for the code, stay for the community.’” (Dries Buytaert, creator
and project lead of Drupal and CTO, Acquia)

May 4, 2016
8
Black Duck Software now identifies over 30 million open source software (OSS) projects, with
just under 2 million active projects with formal release tags. Rules of participation and forms
of governance are almost as varied, ranging from meritocracies to benevolent dictatorships to
community-elected steering committees.
›› Public forges act as developers’ “home base.” Consumers have Facebook, and developers
have GitHub. Cloud-hosted, public forges are closely related to open source projects — social
developers need a place to work together, where their identity is known and linked to what they
are making. Forges combine a developer’s social identity with life-cycle management functions
like source code and task management. With more than 9 million monthly users, GitHub is the
de facto public forge for many social developers, but others include SourceForge, JazzHub, and
CodePlex.13
Developer profiles on public forges create an online social “presence” that transcends
the companies they work for and acts as a digital portfolio of a developer’s work.
›› Hackathons get developers out of the regular office grind. Public hackathons give developers
a chance to socialize with other tech enthusiasts, learn new skills, and demonstrate their
programming talent. Music sets the mood, and pizza, soda, beer, and snacks fuel participants
through events. Developers also get the opportunity to exhibit their creative works to media, tech
insiders, and executives at end-of-hackathon pitches. The best apps, usually selected by a panel of
judges, win prize money and sometimes even development contracts.14
Companies like Atlassian
and Schneider Electric host their own internal hackathons to foster innovation and collaboration
across their development shops and business units.15
›› Drink-ups, meet-ups, and tweet-ups trade code for social networking. Not every developer
social expression includes writing code. At drink-ups and meet-ups, the focus shifts to networking,
exchanging ideas and experiences, and sometimes simply having a good time with other
technology optimists — and maybe talking about code. Think of these events like a Parisian
coffeehouse, where artists congregate to “talk shop.”
›› Maker spaces help developers connect with other makers. Hacker spaces and maker spaces like
NYC Resistor are places where developers can meet to “share knowledge, hack on projects together,
and build community.”16
Coworking spaces like San Francisco’s Galvanize “build a community to
provide entrepreneurs and learners with life-changing opportunities for growth.”17
Unlike hackathons,
these physical spaces give developers more tools and resources, and they support innovation over a
sustained time frame. And large companies are joining in. IBM hosts a Bluemix garage at Galvanize, and
GE Digital has a maker space embedded at its headquarters in San Ramon, California (see Figure 3).
›› Even in a digital age, developer conferences are still a hot ticket. WWDC, I/O, and re:Invent sell
out in hours or days — even when the keynotes and sessions are streamed live. And it’s not just
the giveaways at shows like I/O. Developers go to learn, talk, and party with other developers.18
While emerging outlets for creativity and collaboration vary, the need for them is consistent —
developers are social, and they like to share what they know with each other (see Figure 4).

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FIGURE 3 GE Digital’s Headquarters Include An Innovation Maker Space
Source: Photo from GE Digital’s maker space in San Ramon, California

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FIGURE 3 GE Digital’s Headquarters Include An Innovation Maker Space (Cont.)
Source: Photo from GE Digital’s maker space in San Ramon, California

May 4, 2016
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FIGURE 4 Developers Like To Share What They Know With Others
Source: Forrester’s Business Technographics®
Global Developer Survey, 2014
“Thinking about your current role at work, please indicate how much each
statement describes your attitudes.”
11%
21%
21%
23%
25%
26%
29%
30%
37%
25%
40%
38%
45%
45%
43%
44%
37%
45%
32%
24%
29%
23%
22%
22%
21%
23%
15%
22%
10%
9%
7%
6%
6%
4%
7%
10%
5%
3%
2%
2%
3%
2%
3%
It is easy for me to get funding for new projects
or tools I need to do my job
I feel recognized for the effort I put in
I feel challenged every day
I have access to the technology and tools that
I need to solve my own problems and
challenges at work
I feel empowered to ﬁnd new ways to solve
customer and business problems
If I can ﬁnd a better way to do my job,
my boss will always support me
It’s clear to me how my work contributes to
my company’s overall success
I love my job
I like sharing what I know with others
Describes me completely 4 3 2 Doesn’t describe me at all
Base: 1,453 professional developers, game developers, consultants,
IT developers, and freelancer developers
2%
1%
Rebuild Development Culture To Retain Social Developers
Development shops that understand the social nature of developers are adjusting their internal culture
to deal with the developer gap. Doing so requires breaking traditional organization structures, new
development and recruiting processes, and changes in the technology investments that development
shops make. In the process, these shops are shifting from an algorithmic mindset to one that favors
crafting software (see Figure 5).
Our research finds seven principal ways that forward-looking shops are closing the developer gap and
deepening their appeal to social developers:
1. Breaking down corporate walls. Firms like Sabre find that adopting OSS at scale leads to an
“inner sourcing” culture that is flatter and more collaborative, with higher internal movement across
business units.19
At Google, it’s just the way they do things:

May 4, 2016
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“The vast majority of our codebase is in one big repository. Developers can look at nearly any code,
and there are only limited committer restrictions. If you find a bug — you can fix it.” (Brad Abrams,
group product manager, Google)
Google’s open approach didn’t come without cost; it required significant investments in the
company’s build and release management systems. It’s also helped by an OSS program office that
facilitates the collaboration.
2. Connecting to the communities they work in. Developers we spoke with emphasized the
importance of connecting to the communities where their offices are located. All “Googlers” get
a set amount of hours to get involved externally in their communities, by teaching or volunteering
their time. Acquia directly supports Amnesty International and Médecins Sans Frontières, and
it enables nonprofits with support for Drupal. Pivotal Labs employees volunteer with Code for
America, and the company sponsors Girls Who Code.
3. Remaking the demographics of their shop. Women and minorities are chronically
underrepresented in development shops and the computer science programs they draw from.
Firms like Facebook, Goldman Sachs, Google, IBM, and Twitter are targeting this issue head-on by
sponsoring and recruiting at organizations like Girls Who Code, Hear Me Code, Made with Code,
and Girl Develop It. But it’s more than that: Changing development culture also includes building an
inclusive support network, internship programs, and pushing back on the “brogrammer effect.”20
These firms are also posting their progress for anyone to see.21
4. Generating an inbound pipeline of new talent. The Telerik unit of Progress Software invests in
the building a strong pipeline of developers in Bulgaria.
“We started with training and then employment for students with no prior development experience
through the Telerik Academy, but we’ve gone deeper by offering classroom training for kids all the
way into the primary school levels, giving them the opportunity to create skill sets that will give
them employment opportunities at a number of businesses throughout Bulgaria.” (Todd Anglin,
chief evangelist, Progress Software)
In the process, Telerik’s efforts have been recognized by the president of Bulgaria, and the
company has been voted the No. 1 employer in the country for six years running. The investment
creates a win-win, as those who are exposed to development at a young age remember the
company and developers who enabled them. IBM’s developerWorks team is also starting early with
its Exite Camp, which attempts to arrest the decline among women in technology careers before
it starts. And Oracle is sponsoring Devoxx, where it teaches 7- to 12-year-olds in five different
countries how to program by “making pigs fly in Java” as they build mods to Minecraft.
5. Finding developers that other companies miss. Social developers immerse themselves in
work in which they find shared purpose. Catalyst uses this intrinsic motivation to feed its talent
management platform, by aligning developers with clients whose projects interest them. Catalyst’s
algorithms value shared purpose over certifications and credentials.

May 4, 2016
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“We cast a wider net than traditional HR recruiting processes — and find matches that others miss.
Aligning shared purpose and collecting data that allows us to match a developer with a team
and an effort that aligns not only with their skills but with their nontechnical experiences, talents,
and personal characteristics increases productivity, reduces turnover, and is helping us build the
software engineering capabilities of our clients as they look to build the ability to apply technology
to their core business.” (Mike Rosenbaum, founder and CEO, Catalyst DevWorks)
6. Rebuilding their development spaces. Many firms we spoke with are rebuilding the physical
space where developers work.
“Younger developers demand authenticity in the places they work — it’s non-negotiable” (Tobias
Dengel, CEO, WillowTree)
ADP’s Innovation Lab is designed “to foster ideation, fast experimentation, and validation,” says
Jerome Gouvernel, vice president — Product Incubator, ADP. The space is open and is built to
enable collaboration and support self-organizing agile teams. AT&T is currently making significant
investments in its Workplace 2020 initiative, moving beyond developer spaces and foundries that
support customer projects. CI&T’s Coding Dojos provide shared space for teams to gather and
explore challenges and new technologies together.22
7. Exporting their culture to their clients. Once established, a highly social development culture
becomes a valued asset internally and externally. It helps systems integrators, design agencies,
and digital specialists win business.
“Pivotal takes the purest elements of Silicon Valley’s innovation culture and transfers it to our clients.
Together, we develop software solutions using modern practices like pair programming, lean
startup concepts, and balanced teams. These modern methods foster a culture that’s optimized for
change. Like Google, Uber, and venture-backed startups, our clients value their newfound culture
of continuous innovation, which allows them to operate at startup speed to beat their competitors
to market opportunities.” (Edward Hieatt, senior vice president of services, Pivotal)

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FIGURE 5 The Software Factory Model Versus The Developer Guild Model
Tag clouds for two opposing models
OrganizedTop-down
Process
Specialized
Consistent
roleDeﬁned
utilitySolid
Cost focus
factorySoftware
Control
focusProductivity
Passionate Authentic
Creative
purposeShared
cultureLearning Social
Partner-player Developer
Autonomy
guild
Recommendations
Rebuild Your Culture By Embracing Social Development
If your company needs great software — and it does! — then it needs great developers. To succeed,
development leaders must react to the demands of developers who increasingly reject the very
concept of working in a software factory. Offshoring development to lower-cost countries, importing
H-1B employees to replace existing workers, and winnowing down internal staff to the bare minimum
are sure ways to send your best developers packing. Instead of the “software factory,” consider a
“developer guild” model that invests in autonomy, emphasizes mentorship, and trusts developers to
make correct decisions on their own. As a leader, you have to choose which model to enact.
We recommend that customer-obsessed firms choose the guild road. But be warned: It’s not easy.
It means committing to the hard work of building a talent pipeline, it requires trust, and it demands
autonomy. And high-performance developers won’t come cheap as long as a developer gap persists,
so AD&D leaders will either pay premium rates to third-party firms or invest in creating a culture in their
shop that attracts good developers and makes them want to stay, or do both.
As you pursue the internal-talent path, above-average pay is increasingly a given, so focus hard on
intangibles like collaboration, shared purpose, authentic spaces, and productive tools. Rebuild by:
›› Frankly assessing your existing culture. If you’re out-recruiting Silicon Valley stalwarts already,
then skip this step. If not, ask “why not?” Low turnover is great — if you have the skills you need
and an entrenched high-performance culture. Turning a blind eye to cultural problems won’t close

May 4, 2016
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your developer gap. And external recruits will quickly pick up your shop’s vibe during interviews
or within the first few months of employment. Use the “parking lot metric” as one quick test of
engagement: How full is your lot at 9:00 a.m., and how full is it at 6:00 p.m.?
›› Ditching the stereotypes. It’s hard to ditch the antisocial perception if your shop is all-male, all-
white, and locked away in offices or stuffed in sterile cubes. Commit to diversity in hiring practices,
and support local organizations that are actively working to increase diversity in development.
Don’t stamp out the social engagement that drives camaraderie and attachment, but redirect it
away from “brogrammerism” by rewarding community engagement, mentorship, and depth of
customer engagement.
›› Tearing down cube-land. Make developers want to come to work in your office by giving them
creative spaces to work in. Design physical space that will support cross-functional, self-organizing
IDEA teams. Make sure there are different types of spaces that developers can work in throughout
the day so they can match space to activity type. Allow teams to personalize their spaces to reflect
their working habits, customer needs, and product requirements.
›› Connecting to your local community. Get engaged with developing your own local talent pipeline
by connecting to local volunteer organizations and giving motivated developers time to connect
and support for their activities. Examples range from dedicated organizations like Code for America
to nearby colleges to local high-school and middle-school FIRST robotics teams. Don’t compel
participation in specific activities, but support and reward engagement in local activities or open
source communities, and make it part of what’s expected for progression into more senior roles.
›› Recruiting early and often. We regularly encounter highly talented developers interning for
companies well before their upper-class college years. Develop an internship program to identify
top talent early, and foster extended contact with the best local development talent you can find.
Never assume that a college freshman or high school senior is “too young” to add value. They may
have more hours on the latest JavaScript framework than your shop’s most seasoned developers.
›› Mentoring young talent. As you implement these approaches, expect to see younger, more junior
developers in your shop. Don’t leave them to fend for themselves, or they might not stay. Instead,
identify “master craftspeople,” and make mentoring developer apprentices and journeymen part of
their goals. Pair programming is a good tactic, as is mixing up skill levels on product-centric IDEA
teams. Above all, make sure the shop’s social activities support new talent as well as old hands.
›› Injecting creativity and shared purpose into the workplace. Yes, writing code is “work,” and
that’s why you pay developers. But that doesn’t mean AD&D leaders can’t inject more enjoyment
and better engagement into the day by better supporting creative employees. Breaks for creative
workers are critical to recharging the mind — that’s what a foosball table enables. A comfy sofa
and chairs in a “fireside” or “huddle” area is a small price to pay when you’ve reduced the office
footprint by 25% with open work spaces. Use collaborative tools, community-connected causes,
a product-centric team structure, and transparent communication of business goals, customer
satisfaction, and financial results to foster shared purpose with your development teams.

May 4, 2016
16
›› Tapping into emergent social development best practices. Many development practices that
enable high collaboration and shared purpose already exist — in open source communities,
during hackathons, and at maker spaces. AD&D leaders should spend time understanding
these communities, the tools they use, and the ways that they self-organize. Ask the question:
“What technologies, tools, and tactics can we bring back into our day-to-day activities to
engage our developers?”
What It Means
The Democratization Of Software Development
As long as the developer gap persists, we expect social development to expand as developer power,
and their awareness of it, grows. The impact will be pronounced:
›› The developer gap reduces organizational power as serfs become yeomen. When the
Black Death wiped out half the population of England in 1348, there were profound economic
consequences. Serfs shook off their feudal chains and demanded better working terms from
landowners.23
Expect a similar process while the developer gap persists. Top developers will get
more say in their working conditions and tool choices, and they will make more money. Owners of
development shops that meet their terms will prosper while those that don’t will wonder why they
can’t find anyone to tend their applications.
›› Shops that trash their culture will consign themselves to digital mediocrity. Business leaders
should view the culture of their development shop like a canary in a coal mine. As long as it’s flitting
around, they have a good shot at driving digital disruption. Leaders that treat developers as factory
workers and favor hourly costs over high performance will see short-term benefits as they keep a
lid on salaries, offshore to low-cost countries, and replace expensive talent with imported labor.
But that’s the surest way to kill the developer canary. In the long term, the corrosive effects of the
software factory model will devastate their shops as high-performing developers leave, quickly
followed by anyone else who can. In the end, shops that trash their culture will be left with an
albatross: developers who don’t invest in their skills and can’t find better communities to join.
›› Failed states face stark choices. Organizations that have outsourced development or trashed
their development culture face a tough choice in the age of the customer. They can accept the
status quo and the mediocre applications it produces or take corrective action by: 1) buying culture
and top talent at premium rates from development communities, talent brokers, design agencies,
or digital boutiques; 2) “acqui-hiring” a small, well-run shop with good culture to use as the starting
point for a new development shop; or 3) rebuilding their shop from scratch. None of these options
comes cheap, and a full rebuild will take years as long as the developer gap persists.

May 4, 2016
17
›› Gravity shifts from corporate cathedrals to self-governing guilds. As more and more new
open source projects become the focus of developers and development shops alike, the industry
center of gravity shifts to the communities and foundations that guide them. MongoDB is a good
example. It started out as an experiment by Eliot Horowitz, became an open source project, then
a community, and then a unicorn. Think of these social communities not so much as bazaars
but as modern-day developer guilds that are run by developers, for developers. They might have
occasional financial support from ISVs and concerned corporations, but governance will fall to
those that have the skills to create and approve pull requests.
›› Software vendors that are developer-obsessed will prosper. We see strong signs that
development shop leaders are willing to defer tool and technology choices to developers — as long
as it drives productivity and retention. Software vendors will need to adjust to a world of growing
developer input into software buying decisions. This will favor firms that use penetration pricing
models and on-demand services and those that have good self-service developer portals. Put
bluntly: Developers will choose the easiest path — not because they are lazy, but because they are
busy. Make their lives easy, and they will reward you with their patronage, and in the process they
will bring the purchasing power of their employer with them.
›› Closing the developer gap will become more important as disruption accelerates. Consider
all the disruption that mobile moments have wrought over the past decade. But mobile disruption
pales in comparison to the technology that’s on the horizon. The internet of things, augmented/
artificial intelligence, natural language processing, and augmented/virtual reality are about to throw
your development shop for a loop. New programming metaphors, input/output methods, and tools
will challenge even your best developers to shift their habits and quickly learn new technology.
Middle-school students building Minecraft mods and hacking the Amazon Echo in their living room
are your next generation of front-end developers, already in training.
›› Healthy development shops will get wilder and woolier. As the developer guild model takes
hold and diversity increases, expect your development shop to look less and less regimented
as the developers your hire and grow become more varied in their talents. Multiple levels of job
classes, highly specialized roles, and yearly stack-ranking exercises will give way to cross-skilling
and simpler master-journeyman-apprentice style relationships, with self-organizing teams based
on social relationships and mutual respect. Look to management models from other creative
professions for inspiration, where loosely federated groups of individuals with high levels of respect
for each other’s work come together to quickly create successful products and then reform around
their next great collaborative work. Aspire to be the J.J. Abrams of your development shop, even if
it does mean pointier ears or odder working hours.

May 4, 2016
18
Supplemental Material
Survey Methodology
Forrester’s Global Business Technographics® Developer Survey, 2016 was fielded in January 2016.
This online survey included 1,867 respondents in Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany,
India, New Zealand, the UK, and the US.
Forrester’s Business Technographics ensures that the final survey population contains only those with
significant involvement in the planning, funding, and purchasing of business and technology products
and services. ResearchNow fielded this survey on behalf of Forrester. Survey respondent incentives
include points redeemable for gift certificates.
Please note that the brand questions included in this survey should not be used to measure market
share. The purpose of Forrester’s Business Technographics brand questions is to show usage of a
brand by a specific target audience at one point in time.
Companies Interviewed For This Report
Engage With An Analyst
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10x Management
Acquia
ADP
Appirio
AT&T
Catalyst DevWorks

May 4, 2016
19
CI&T
CodeMontage
Devoxx
EPAM
Gigster
Girl Develop It
Girls Who Code
GitHub
Google
Hear Me Code
IBM
Intel
KPMG
MongoDB
Mutual Mobile
NCI
Pivotal
Progress Software
Quilted
Schneider Electric
Solstice Mobile
SourceForge
TrackVia
WillowTree
Women Who Code
Endnotes
1
We’ve written extensively about this trend. See the “The Software-Powered Business” Forrester report and see the
“Software Must Enrich Your Brand” Forrester report.
2
Source: “Software Development Skills Survey,” TECNA (Technology Councils Of North America) (http://www.tecna.org/
software-development-talent-survey.html#sthash.s6MgjNJY.dpbs).
3
Source: Fred O’Connor, “Software developer shortage transcends international boundaries,” PCWorld, October 21,
2014 (http://www.pcworld.com/article/2837012/software-developer-shortage-transcends-international-boundaries.
html); Andrada Fiscutean, “Software developer shortage hits Eastern Europe: Romania’s plan to stay ahead in the
game,” ZDNet, March 23, 2015 (http://www.zdnet.com/article/software-developer-shortage-hits-eastern-europe-
romanias-plan-to-stay-ahead-in-the-game/); and Ron Schneiderman, “Skills Shortage Challenges European Tech
Industry,” IEEE, April 2014 (http://careers.ieee.org/article/European_Job_Outlook_0414.php).
4
Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (http://www.bls.gov/emp/ep_table_102.htm).
5
Source: WebCASPAR (https://ncsesdata.nsf.gov/webcaspar/OlapBuilder).
6
We’ve written about key differences in how professional software companies run their shops in comparison with
development shops that are part of tech management practices. Those differences extend to hiring practices for
developers as well. For more, see the “Develop Customer-Centric Applications Like The Pros Do” Forrester report.
7
Source: “Summary Report for: 15-1132.00 - Software Developers, Applications,” O-NET OnLine (http://www.
onetonline.org/link/summary/15-1132.00#WagesEmployment) and “May 2015 National Occupational Employment
and Wage Estimates United States,” U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes_nat.htm#00-
0000).

May 4, 2016
20
8
Source: Susan Adams, “The College Degrees With The Highest Starting Salaries in 2015,” Forbes, November 19,
2014 (http://www.forbes.com/sites/susanadams/2014/11/19/the-college-degrees-with-the-highest-starting-salaries-
in-2015/).
9
In the following report, many firms we spoke with noted that three to four years of experience is where diminishing
returns set in with respect to experienced mobile developers. See the “What Does It Cost To Source A Mobile App?”
Forrester report.
10
For more information on these autonomy-enhancing development practices, see the “Forget Two-Speed IT; DevOps
Enables Faster Delivery Across The Board” Forrester report.
11
Malcolm Gladwell discusses the 10,000-hour rule for mastery in his best-selling book. Source: Malcolm Gladwell,
Outliers: The Story of Success, Little, Brown and Company, 2008.
12
The growth of social development builds on larger patterns of social technologies first articulated in the Forrester
book Groundswell. Source: Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff, Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed By Social
Technologies, Harvard Business Press, 2008.
13
Source: Paul Sawers, “GitHub by the numbers: 32M people visit each month — 74% from outside the U.S., 36% from
Europe,” VentureBeat, June 17, 2015 (http://venturebeat.com/2015/06/17/github-by-the-numbers-32m-people-visit-
each-month-74-from-outside-the-u-s-36-from-europe/).
14
For more on how to host a hackathon, see the “Energize Your Developers With A Hackathon” Forrester report.
15
For more information on Atlassian’s “FedEx Days,” see the “Case Study: Atlassian Creates An Innovation Culture That
Produces Results” Forrester report.
16
Source: NYC Resistor (http://www.nycresistor.com).
17
Source: Galvanize (http://www.galvanize.com/about/#.VuGM2ceRScE).
18
For a list of recommended developer conferences, see the “Developer Conferences Speed Your Transition To Modern
Application Development” Forrester report.
19
For more on the impact that Sabre’s systematic adoption of open source technology had on its development
organization’s culture, see the “Case Study: Sabre — A Culture Of Engagement” Forrester report.
20
Source: Jordan Weissmann, “The Brogrammer Effect: Women Are a Small (and Shrinking) Share of Computer
Workers,” The Atlantic, September 12, 2013 (http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/09/the-brogrammer-
effect-women-are-a-small-and-shrinking-share-of-computer-workers/279611/).
21
Source: Google Diversity (https://www.google.com/diversity/); Janet Van Huysse, “Building a Twitter we can be proud
of,” Twitter, July 23, 2014 (https://blog.twitter.com/2014/building-a-twitter-we-can-be-proud-of); Maxine Williams,
“Driving Diversity at Facebook,” Facebook, June 25, 2015 (https://newsroom.fb.com/news/2015/06/driving-diversity-
at-facebook/); “Diversity/Demographics Awards And Rankings,” Goldman Sachs (http://www.goldmansachs.com/s/
esg-impact/metrics-and-recognition/diversity-and-demographics/); and “Inclusion & Diversity,” Apple (http://www.
apple.com/diversity/).
22
Stay tuned for deeper research later this year about best practices for designing developer spaces. In the meantime,
look for an upcoming report titled “How New Workspaces Catalyze Developers’ Innovation, Collaboration, And
Cultural Change,” which we expect to publish in May.
23
For more information on the rise of the yeomanry, refer to pages 40 through 42 of the following book. Source: Percival
Hunt, Fifteenth Century England, University of Pittsburgh Press, 1962.

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