OAKLAND, Calif., July 11, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- LaunchDarkly, the leading feature management software provider, today released a report on psychological safety titled, “Release assurance: Why innovative software delivery starts with trust and psychological safety.” The report outlines how processes impact company innovation, the pressures software developers face today, and what is causing developers to leave their jobs. Developed in partnership with independent research company Wakefield Research, the report offers insights on what factors cause developers to feel more or less psychologically safe and willing to take risks at work, and how a company’s ability to innovate impacts the developer experience.
“As companies undergo their digital transformation initiatives, it’s important for business leaders to understand and consider the factors that influence the psychological safety of their development teams, and how their ability to confidently take risks has an impact on innovation,” said Ravi Tharisayi, Senior Director of Product Marketing for LaunchDarkly. “Our study found that with modern software delivery processes in place and a supportive leadership team that encourages risk taking, developers will be more productive and innovative, ultimately leading to a greater business impact.”
The report includes a number of notable findings about how to create psychologically safe and innovative environments where developers can thrive, including:
- Developers seek environments that encourage risk taking:
- 67% of developers either have or know someone who has left a job due to pressure around minimizing deployment errors.
- 93% of developers agree that confidence in a team’s ability to safely release code updates empowers them to innovate more.
- Developers at larger companies feel more innovative than those at smaller companies:
- 45% of respondents in companies with 1,000+ employees said they feel much more innovative than their peers, whereas only 28% of respondents in companies with fewer than 1,000 employees said the same.
- Support from leadership to take risks nurtures innovation and better results:
- 100% of developers say taking risks and applying new development strategies can positively affect business outcomes, especially by encouraging greater innovation among staff (53%), increasing adaptability (52%), and improving the bottom line (49%).
- 86% believe it’s essential or very important for their career to explore new development approaches and solutions.
- Leadership teams need to prioritize simplified development processes:
- 94% of developers say internal processes, tools, or culture are necessary to feel safe about taking risks to deploy updates.
- 61% of respondents feel their company’s heavyweight development processes are barriers to innovation. But, 63% of respondents who release code more frequently due to a streamlined process do not experience these barriers.
“Psychological safety is a critical indicator for modern software delivery, which drives today’s successful companies – enabling velocity, quality, innovation and a sense of ownership from software developers and engineers,” said James Governor, RedMonk co-founder. “This report makes it clear that decision makers need to orient their management strategies, tactics and processes around trust, autonomy and blameless culture in order to become elite performers in building digital products and services.”
To compile this report, LaunchDarkly and Wakefield Research surveyed 500 United States software developers at companies with a minimum of 100 employees to gain insight into what environments help them thrive and how companies can better support software innovation.
To learn more and download the full report, visit this page.
About LaunchDarkly
LaunchDarkly isn’t just a leader in feature management — it’s the first scalable feature management platform. Feature management allows development teams to innovate faster by fundamentally transforming how software is delivered to customers. With the ability to gradually release new software features to any segment of users on any platform, DevOps teams can standardize safe releases at scale, accelerate their journey to the cloud and collaborate more effectively with business teams. Today, LaunchDarkly deploys peaks of 20 trillion feature flags a day, and that number continues to grow. Founded in 2014 in Oakland, California by Edith Harbaugh and John Kodumal, LaunchDarkly has been named on the Forbes Cloud 100 list, InfoWorld’s 2021 Technology of the Year list, and the Enterprise Tech 30 list. Learn more at launchdarkly.com.
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