Buyer’s Guide: Choosing a Software Engineering Intelligence Platform [ebook]

In 2022, IT spending for organizations worldwide exceeded $4.4 trillion, underscoring the essential role of tech in today’s economy. Gartner’s research shows that investment in technology is key to business success, spurring a heightened focus on the software engineering organizations behind that technology.

Engineering organizations are now under greater pressure to maximize ROI, effectively allocate resources, communicate with stakeholders on progress, and deliver quality software quickly. To achieve this, engineering leaders need visibility into engineering processes, where resources are going, and how their teams are working.

The challenge of visibility in engineering

In the past, leaders have relied on homegrown solutions and surveys to assess the state of the engineering organization. These solutions can be error-prone and time consuming, requiring leaders to manually gather information from a variety of sources like project management tools and version control systems.

To gain critical context and dependable data, leaders should leverage a Software Engineering Intelligence (SEI) platform. An SEI platform ingests, cleans, links, and analyzes data from teams’ existing systems, surfacing those insights via alerts, custom reporting, and intuitive visualizations. This gives leaders the visibility they need to evaluate tradeoffs, mitigate risk, enhance communication, boost engineering efficiency, and improve value delivery.

Gartner predicts that 70% of organizations will have an SEI platform by 2026, up from 5% in 2023.

(Source: Innovation Insight for Software Engineering Intelligence Platforms, March, 2023)

How can engineering leaders best evaluate which SEI platform is the best option for their organization?

We’ve put together a comprehensive buyer’s guide outlining what leaders should look for in an SEI platform, including key features and capabilities.

We recommend assessing SEI platforms on the following categories:

• Process and Team Health: An SEI platform should provide a multidimensional picture of team health, while adapting to variations in team process.

• Allocations and Business Value: It’s imperative that an SEI platform help leaders accurately assess resource allocation and quantify engineering impact.

• Efficiency and Predictable Delivery: The right SEI platform should help leaders improve their team’s ability to deliver code consistently, predictably, and at high quality.

• Team Effectiveness: An SEI platform will offer insight into whether interruptions, wasted work, or other factors are impacting engineering’s ability to deliver value.

• Data Hygiene and Analysis: The best SEI platform will deliver trustworthy insights while working in tandem with the tools and workflows a team is already using.

• Scalability and Customization: An SEI platform should be able to meet the unique needs of complex, large, and ever-evolving organizations.

• Security: The best SEI platforms will prioritize the security of your data.

Code Climate’s industry-leading Velocity platform is the only one to offer enterprise-grade security and scalability. From day one, Velocity maximizes engineering impact with trusted and actionable insights for leaders and teams at all levels — from capacity and delivery to quality, culture, and costs.

As outlined in the guide, Velocity provides unique advantages in four key areas:

• Clear Focus on Improving the Efficiency and Output of Engineering Teams: Velocity provides critical visibility into development processes, including insights for coaching and for improving the overall health and efficiency of an engineering organization.

• Security and Scalability for Large, Complex Organizations: Velocity adapts to our customers’ needs, and our security and scalability capabilities are built to handle the largest enterprises.

• Personalized Customer Experience: Velocity offers a superior customer experience from Day 1, with white-glove support, thorough technical onboarding, multiple training options, and a consultative approach to change management.

• Customizations That Adapt to How Our Customers Work: Velocity is highly customizable, adapting to the way our customers work. The platform offers autonomy for each of your engineering teams so that they can best leverage metrics to improve performance.

Download the complete guide to choosing an SEI platform and find out more about the advantages of SEI, including what to look for when evaluating each of the key capabilities, and a detailed breakdown of how Velocity measures up.