Developer teams are innovating too slowly say developers

Development teams are being prevented from deploying code more often, according to 84 percent of respondents to a new survey.

The research from code development platform Rollbar finds 25 percent say that they only deploy code into production every month or two. Nearly as many (22 percent) say they deploy every two weeks, while six percent deploy only twice yearly.

"Developers want to have an idea, write it in code, and have the user experience that idea," says Cory Virok, CTO and co-founder at Rollbar. "But the reality is that the code that's meant to deliver these experiences is often riddled with errors and bugs. In an effort to provide a stellar customer experience, developers are spending up to 40 percent of their time on testing and quality assurance. Yet software is never perfect, and the pursuit of perfection acts as a barrier to iteration and innovation."

Improvements would increase their confidence and help them to deploy faster according to 86 percent. 40 percent of that group say the number one improvement that they want is better tools to detect and fix code errors. 38 percent say that better project management, a bigger team (36 percent) or a bigger budget (30 percent) would add confidence and enable faster deployment.

86 percent also say that new capability would help them iterate more quickly. Of these 47 percent want to see where each error originates, 34 percent want real-time capabilities would allow for quicker code improvements, and 33 percent want access to rich contextual information on each error.

"Software is essential to modern life," says Brian Rue, CEO and co-founder of Rollbar. "It's no surprise that organizations want high-quality software that provides users with the best possible experience. But software is made of code, and error-free code is a fallacy. Leading organizations are adjusting their toolsets, mindsets and behaviors to address this reality. Instead of trying to perfect software, they are adopting better tools and processes to proactively discover errors as they happen and resolve them immediately."

You can get the full report from the Rollbar site.

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