Software developers 'abandoned' by management

Developers are more sceptical than ever about the commitment of senior managers to software quality, newly published research has claimed.

This mismatch in expectations came to light in a poll of development professionals conducted by enterprise developer testing firm Agitar Software and the DSDM Consortium.

While two-thirds of software developers polled for the study felt that senior managers should share the responsibility for ensuring software quality, almost 70 per cent said that senior management did not take that responsibility.

The survey highlighted the dedication among the developer community to delivering a high degree of software quality.

Some 88 per cent of respondents professed to take a lot of pride in the quality of their own work, and 67 per cent admitted that they would rather catch a bug themselves than find one in their code.

While 85 per cent agreed that developers should be responsible for the overall quality of a software project, the majority of respondents (63 per cent) indicated that they would like more time to test their own work.

Lack of time might explain why developer testing proved popular in concept, with the overwhelming majority of respondents (92 per cent) advocating test-driven development. However, only 44 per cent practised this discipline.

The poll also showed that developers believe firmly that responsibility for software quality is shared among many functions within an organisation, including senior management, business analysts, project managers, testing and quality assurance departments and developers themselves.

"This survey clearly shows that software developers feel abandoned by senior management whom they believe do not share their concern and responsibility for software quality," said Mark de Visser, vice president of marketing at Agitar Software.

"It is encouraging to see how committed developers are to delivering quality software and how willing they are to practise test-driven development.

"But these results highlight how much work needs to be done to make software quality a business imperative for everyone within an organisation."