Which of the 6 Dev Productivity Types Are You?
Photo by Michael Hamments on Unsplash
Imagine a world where you can split software developers into six discrete types.
You live in just that world, as some academics managed to take devs and Microsoft and organize them into 6 productivity buckets.
“I’d say that I’m the one who is best.”
Our self-perceptions
I’ve seen a whole host of different software developers walk in (and out) of the profession. How we perceive productivity is really important in terms of how well we work and how we deliver software products.
Life is like a reflection of our personality. What we put out into the world matters and really affects our experience of life and how other people view us.
The Types
The social developer
If you are a social developer you feel productive when collaborating. To get things done a social developer might come into work early or work late in order to focus on a task and deliver.
The lone developer
If you are a lone developer, you might avoid disruptions such as emails, Slack messages, or code reviews. They are most productive when they work without interruptions.
The focused developer
If you are a focused developer, you feel most productive when you are working efficiently and on a single task. Your company might view all developers as this type of developer but that is in fact far from the truth.
The balanced developer
If you are a balanced developer, you are less affected by disruptions when compared to focused developers. When tasks are unclear or irrelevant, they may become frustrated and unproductive in their own estimation.
The leading developer
If you are a leading developer, you are comfortable with meetings and emails. You probably feel less productive when coding, than other developers and might be frustrated, while dealing with blocking tasks preventing them from doing (in their estimation) productive work.
The goal-oriented developer
If you are a goal-oriented developer, you might feel productive when you complete tasks or make progress. You might shy away from multi-tasking but are more open to meetings and emails compared to other types of developers.
The mix
It needs to be said that you can be a mix of the different types of developers. You might behave as a different developer at different times of the day or in different phases of a sprint. This isn’t unusual but you’re going to have a dominating type most of the time.
“Which one is the awesome developer? Because I’m that one.”
The Learnings
I feel like we’ve had discussions about diversity before. Although it feels like it is best to take an approach where everyone chooses their own environment for their type of developer and make it the developer’s responsibility we can do better.
We should aim for teams with a variety of developers. To achieve this, we can do the following:
Team offices should
Provide quiet spaces for lone and focused developers
Seat social developers in open offices
Increase awareness of team members’ communication preferences
Individuals should
Use tools to avoid interruptions for lone developers
Use asynchronous code review to allow different communication preferences to be used
“Those look so easy to implement. I guess they’re not being done due to the usual reason: incompetence.”
My experience
Throughout my work in teams across Europe, Asia, and the USA, I’ve observed that all types of developers have the potential for success, despite occasional mistakes. If there is one thing, I’ve learned from my experiences is that of utmost importance is collaboration and embracing our differences.
I remember once when a developer sent mobile push notifications to all of our live customers (rather than test). Perhaps they would have benefited from a quieter office to make sure that they didn’t mess things up quite so much!
“That idiot wasn’t The Secret Developer. It wasn’t. Trust me”
Conclusion
Dance if you wanna dance, please take a chance. Be yourself at work but do try to have empathy for others in the workplace as diversity adds so much to workplaces.
If management could follow the advice above that would be great indeed.
“My management can’t get refined tickets into the backlog, so I don’t have high hopes for this!”