The changing role of developers in the enterprise [Q&A]

Recent trends such as cloud, open-source software and low-code platforms have led to radical changes in the role of developers.

But what exactly is the effect of these changes and how can development teams prepare for them and take advantage of the opportunities they offer? We spoke to Bob Quillin, chief ecosystem officer at modernization platform vFunction, to find out.

BN: In what ways do you think the enterprise developer role is changing?

BQ: The enterprise developer of the future will require a Swiss Army Knife set of skills versus the deep specializations that have been the hallmark of developing and maintaining legacy enterprise applications in the past. This is a direct by-product of the dynamic business world that enterprises now must compete in on a day-to-day basis. The development processes have become agile because businesses have needed to become more agile.

To survive and thrive in this new world, enterprise developers will have to rely on a broader set of skills that can bring traditional business applications forward by applying more modern best practices that include CI/CD pipelines, DevOps methodologies, cloud native OSS infrastructure, and application modernization tooling. These same skills also clearly translate to building new, greenfield applications running in public or hybrid cloud environments.

These agile methodologies and broadening skillsets also enable the enterprise developer to get closer to seeing how the value of their work relates directly to the business. And this cuts both ways, from the business back to the application teams. More features being delivered more often will create a synergistic feedback loop that can elevate the role and visibility of enterprise developer teams. Versus being viewed as cost-centers and body-shops, the closer they are to actively adding business value -- faster, reliably and consistently -- the more they can gain increased earning power and better career advancement opportunities.

BN: What steps can developer teams take to best prepare for this change?

BQ: The first step is the most important: actively look for opportunities to add new, forward-looking skill sets -- new blades, tools, and utilities -- to your personal swiss army knife. If those opportunities don’t present themselves at work, then investing in yourself to proactively seek them out is super important. Local meetups and conferences are low friction and easy ways to kickstart your education process and make great contacts. For example, DevOpsDays hosts local education focused events throughout the globe -- organized locally but with great speakers and content. Virtual conferences are even easier to attend these days as you don’t have to travel and can learn remotely.

Great training is now available on-line including LinkedIn Learning (for example, check out this great Intro to Learning Kubernetes) and any number of on-demand options offered free by tech vendors everywhere. The Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) offers training and certifications designed to get developers started on this journey, to sharpen existing skills while learning new ones.

Development managers and execs would do well to encourage their teams to invest in training and skills development. This includes allocating training budgets for each engineer and appropriate time off to support this effort. The best developers crave challenges and learning new skills, and they will either find that in organizations that focus on employee development or leave and go somewhere else that does. It’s one of the most critical elements of retention and satisfaction. Imbuing this into the culture of your company takes it up notch when you include monthly brown bag seminars, internal presentations to share, internal demo days, and regular feature Friday or bug fix Friday events and contests.

BN: Which technology trends are at the forefront of this shift -- cloud native, open-source software, the move to modernization platforms, etc.?

BQ: The previously mentioned technologies above are must-haves. Pick one or two as a start as this can be daunting, but the industry knows the challenge and also understands that this is a win-win scenario. The more they invest in educating you on topics like OSS cloud native tooling, platforms, and patterns (e.g., K8s, containers, microservices, and serverless) the more the market expands for everyone. Lack of training is a personal issue for enterprise developers but also an industry-wide challenge that the tech community is investing in for your sake and theirs.

DevOps teams are also chomping at the bit to get more of their legacy app teams onto the latest and greatest CI/CD pipelines, build processes, and automations. The more they can train developers on these new skills and techniques, the faster these apps can start making the modernization moves and migrations.

New application complexity assessment technology is helping enterprise developers better understand the technical debt they are carrying forward with their legacy monolithic Java or .NET applications. You can't refactor and modernize what you don't understand, so tapping into the new trend of data-driven assessments of the tangled mess of interdependencies in your enterprise apps is imperative. With a clear-eyed view of application complexity, functional domains, and dependencies, you can start to knock down these plaguing issues that keep pushing your technical debt to higher and higher levels every year that they are unaddressed. This sets you up perfectly to then refactor these apps along functional domains using some of the latest application modernization platforms that accelerate and facilitate that process.

BN: Given this shift, what skills are essential for developers to master in order to be successful?

BQ: In a nutshell, enterprise developers should think of this process as building a bridge, from the legacy apps they maintain today to a modern platform that leverages modern technologies that accelerate engineering velocity and thus business agility. It starts with clearly understanding your apps, using data-driven assessments and modernization analytics. That is your starting point. The other end of the bridge is the future modern platform that requires the educational investment and commitment we’ve described above to gain and master new skills. This is the digital and cloud future platform destination at the end of the bridge. Now all you need is to connect both sides and build the bridge using your new application modernization skill sets and tooling. Enterprise developers who can follow this blueprint will enjoy new and exciting work that not only rewards them but rewards the businesses they work for and customers they support.

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