The Gap in Dev Leader Tooling

In the past six months, we have talked to over ONE HUNDRED software development managers, leaders, and executives, and we have one simple takeaway: there is a BIG gap in the tools needed to effectively manage a software development team. 

You may be thinking to yourself, “What about Jira? What about Azure DevOps, Linear, and Asana?” These tools are fantastic for managing software development projects, but they do nothing to help manage the developers themselves.  

So, while dev leaders have very sophisticated tools to manage the software development process, they are often left to manage their people with OneNote and Excel! 

What do we mean by “manage their people with OneNote and Excel?” Well, what are some of the central tasks of managing a team outside of tracking productivity? 

• Facilitating clear communication and feedback so avoidable problems can be prevented 
• Monitoring team sentiment and dynamics to make sure employees are happy and productive 
• Maintaining an understanding of employee skillsets, areas of expertise, and any associated single points of failure to allocate resources and manage risk 

Yet there is no central platform to help with these crucial aspects of team management! The challenges of management are amplified in software development due to the remote/distributed team structure, unique communication preferences, and highly technical subject matter.  

As a result, critical information individual developers like 1-on-1 notes, developer feedback, and skillsets are scattered across basic note-taking tools. This is time-consuming to maintain, unscalable, and a risky way to manage some of your most highly paid, high-impact employees. 

We have talked with plenty of excellent managers who will still go out of their way to try to get all of this done. They will have frequent 1 on 1s with developers, even when remote. They will solicit feedback on key issues proactively and put together a plan to act on it. They will attempt to maintain an understanding of skillsets and criticality across their org to make sure they’re well covered. But all of this is incredibly manual and time-consuming. And, inevitably, when things get crazy, something will be missed. 

This is the problem we are solving with DevClarity, an AI-powered platform built to help dev leaders manage the most important part of their team – the developers themselves! 

We do this by centralizing all of the critical information on developers into a unified view, streamlining feedback across the team, and leveraging AI to provide actionable insights.  

We save dev leaders hours of time, but more importantly, we give them a data-driven way to understand how their team is doing – before they miss a product deadline or get a two-week notice.   

If you are managing a growing, high-impact software development team and want to be the best manager you can be, sign up for a quick demo. We streamline the dev management workflow and let you focus on your highest value work.