Explore the BlueOptima Global Benchmark Report for Q3 2023. Gain data-driven insights into global developer productivity trends, regional performance in India and North America, and sector-specific analysis for Technology, Healthcare, and Financials. Discover how TypeScript and Python are shifting in enterprise tech usage.

BlueOptima Global Benchmark Report: Quarter 3, 2023

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BlueOptima Global Benchmark Report: Quarter 3, 2023

Welcome to the BlueOptima Global Benchmark Report

Welcome to the BlueOptima Global Benchmark (BGB) Report which provides insights into key trends from across the software development industry.

The report provides a global view of the current trends of software development productivity. By consolidating the insights derived from analysis of source code changes delivered by hundreds of thousands of professional software developers working in enterprises located in more than 30 countries, the report provides a quantitative evaluation of their performance. This Report is published quarterly with each Report containing data from the preceding 12 months. The data is analysed using BlueOptima’s Developer Analytics platform to calculate Coding Effort (CE), which sets a global standard for measuring software developer productivity. Coding Effort is a metric derived from objectively measuring a software developer’s work outputs, specifically changes in static source code metrics, and the context within which that output was delivered then benchmarking that against all other developers.

Coding Effort is used by large global enterprises to compare the productivity of software engineers across technologies and software development methodologies to deliver actionable insights to optimise the software development lifecycle.

This quarter's key insights are:

Alongside productivity, the maintainability of source code changes delivered by software developers are measured using BlueOptima’s Analysis of Relative Thresholds (ART). Analysis of Relative Thresholds is an objective measure of source code maintainability obtained by using static source code metrics to evaluate how easy it is for a developer unfamiliar with the source code to deliver change into that source code. ART is described as ‘quality’ in this report. It is the proportion of Billable Coding Effort (BCE) hours spent delivering maintainable source code change.

The analysis within this report deliberately excludes part-time and hobbyist software developers. For example, those contributing to open source projects, as the economic cost and impact of their participation in these projects are indirect and unclear. The data employed in this analysis represents an approximated 2% sampling of the global enterprise software developer population.

BlueOptima’s further offerings around benchmarking and recruiting allow organisations to cost-optimise as early as possible in software initiatives. BlueOptima’s SaaS platform facilitates analysis of productivity, together with quality, in enterprise software development, in terms of individuals, teams, tasks, projects, divisions, and outsourced suppliers. Understanding variations in performance across an enterprise empowers managers to optimise efficiency. BlueOptima is proven to identify savings of up to 20% for software budgets.

Global Trends

There is signs of a return to productivity growth in this quarter in the BlueOptima Global Benchmark data. The increase in Q3 2023 compared to Q2 2023 is ~1.18 %. However, code maintainability has decreased slightly during the period.

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‍Caption: Global Trends for Productivity (BCE/Day) and Quality (%) from Q4 2022 to Q3 2023

Global Breakdown Data

Economic Sector Performance

Healthcare

Technology

This sector remained the most productive and the only major economic sector that has increased productivity by ~1.79%. However, the Code Quality is the least maintainable and showed a decline.

Financials

Financial remains the least productive major economic sector. The sector experienced the most significant drop from last quarter, losing ~1.52% in productivity.

Regional Performance

Asia-Pacific Group

IndiaWith a ~4.19% surge in productivity, this region has displayed the greatest growth and is driving the global productivity increase.

Asia-Pacific Group (excl. India)While still more productive than India this region has continued to decline in productivity and has a noticeable fall in Code Quality.

North America

North America GroupThis region had the greatest drop, ~2.81%, in Q3 2023 although interestingly Code Quality remaining consistent.

Latin American & Caribbean Group (GRULAC)

Similar to the North American Group, this region showed a drop in productivity of ~2.17%.

Europe

Western Europe GroupThis region continues the quarter-on-quarter decline in productivity seen for the past 3 quarters with a ~1.80% decline in Q3 2023.

Eastern Europe GroupFollowing a major drop, the region is showing signs of growth again, maintaining the most sustainable code despite a ~0.12% dip in Code Quality this quarter.

Top Enterprise Technologies Breakdown

TypeScript has surpassed YAML to become the second most used language again, while Python cements its position at seventh most used language, overtaking JavaScript. Meanwhile, Java continues to hold its spot as the most used language.

Language Proportion of Coding Effort (%) - Q3 2023

Historical Proportion Trends (Q4 2022 - Q3 2023)

Note: Additional extensions mapped to TypeScript since the last report.

About the Report’s Data

Proration Methodology Changes

BlueOptima has made significant improvements to our proration logic, particularly when handling infrequent committers or those with an extended break from the code base. This change considerably reduces the instance of underreported productivity due to extended absences from working with a codebase. In order to ensure the comparison between the two quarters is statistically justifiable the previous quarters data has been recalculated in this report so both quarters are using the same proration methodology and hence a comparison on productivity can be made.

Analysis of Relative Thresholds (ART)

ART is a measure of the quality (specifically: maintainability) of source code. It is calculated by evaluating the proportion of code which is aberrant, relative to the codebase in which it sits. Code is flagged as aberrant when it violates certain internally benchmarked statistical thresholds, across a number of static source code metrics.

Global Software Developer Population

BlueOptima uses a sampling technique in calculating the performance of software engineers across various geographical regions and industries globally. BlueOptima has estimated the global software developer population using a combination of accredited sources and predictive modelling.

BlueOptima Population Sample

This report leverages models and analysis built on the BlueOptima dataset which contains activities of over 400,000 developers and more than 126 Billion static metrics changes. Detailed location, employment, and organisational data is available for:

The regions of Africa and the Middle East have been omitted due to insufficient sample size. All data used is anonymised and aggregated.

Coding Effort

Coding Effort is calculated by statistically evaluating every source code change made by developers in terms of 36 static source code metrics measuring various aspects of Volume, Complexity, and Inter-relatedness while considering the context worked in e.g. a complex legacy software component or a brand new project.

Regional Population Estimates

Business Classification

The classification of organisations into Economic Sectors, Industry Groups, and Industries is done using The Refinitiv Business Classification. Estimates of the numbers of enterprise software developers in Economic Sectors, Industry Groups, and Industries is done by measuring various proxies of software developers in a firm (e.g. annual revenue, profit, assets, and headcount of each organisation) on a per industry basis and optimising estimation of this against the known developer population in a subset of the those organisations that are known to BlueOptima.

Who are BlueOptima?

We provide a SaaS technology that objectively measures software development efficiency. Our core metrics for productivity and code maintainability allow executives to make data driven decisions related to talent optimization, vendor management, location strategy and much more.

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