A survey by Twilio reveals that IT leaders realize the value of developers, yet still aren't giving them a voice in strategic decision making.
UK businesses see developers as being key to their digital transformation efforts but are still leaving them out of conversations around how new products should be built.
A survey of 400 IT decision makers by cloud communications company Twilio found that developers are often sidelined in strategic decision making around how to tackle customer problems.
The research found that leaders often only engage with development teams late in the project lifecycle, severely limiting their ability to provide input to new products and ensure they are effective.
More than half (53%) IT decision makers admitted that they didn't involve developers at the start of a project, despite this being crucial in enabling development teams to understand the problems needing to be solved. Even so, 95% of respondents said developers were important to digital transformation, and 91% acknowledged that dev teams were important in helping them respond to COVID-19 challenges.
Marcos Placona, head of developer relations EMEA at Twilio, suggested that the issue was down to a misconception that developers and there simply to write code. "The developer will typically be briefed in on what features are needed and sent on their way to write the code," Placona told TechRepublic.Â
"In many cases, there is a false perception that it's wise to keep customers and developers apart. Typically, business functions act as the gatekeeper to the customer and ultimately prevent them from understanding the project's reasons. But actually, developers are a creative workforce who, when given the opportunity, can use their expertise to find technological solutions, not simply build them."
IT teams have of course been crucial in tackling the new challenges that have arisen from the COVID-19, which has forced many businesses to accelerate their digitization plans in order to survive.
Twilio's research, which surveyed CTOs, CIOs and other senior IT decision makers, found that nearly all (96%) believed the role of technology was important in responding to the challenges of the pandemic, with 68% saying it was 'very important'.
Of the 91% that said developers were crucial to this response, more than half (53%) regarded their role as 'very important'. This increased to 70% in the IT, technology & telecoms sector.
Twilio suggested that the perceived value of developers was starting to shift as a result of the pandemic: prior to COVID-19, less than a third (31%) said believed developers were 'vital' to the performance of the organization.
