Software developers' perceptions of productivity

For your marketing

Possible founder application

Useful for product/engineering workflow hypotheses and user research, not proof that a tool improves delivery metrics; pair perceived productivity with cycle time, quality, and wellbeing measures.

Reported result

What the study found

Developers perceive days as productive when completing many or large tasks without significant interruptions/context switches, although substantial task/activity switching can coexist with feeling productive.

Research question

What the authors investigated

How do professional software developers perceive productive and unproductive work?

Design

Two studies, including a survey and an observational study, examining professional developers' perceptions of productive and unproductive work.

Sample and setting

Two studies, including a survey and an observational study, examining professional developers' perceptions of productive and unproductive work.

Scope and transfer

Limitations to keep in view

Perceived rather than objective productivity; observational/self-report bias; developer and workplace context may not represent all teams.

Research sources

Publisher article page directly retrieved with Firecrawl (reference 01a122bc-2599-72ce-b1ae-8d126dcda4a4). The annotation follows the retrieved title/abstract or landing-page record; full methods and correction notices were not independently reviewed.

Additional research source ↗