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Rock star agile developers. We are all talking about them. But are they truly out there? Studies show that developer productivity falls into a wide range. An average run-of-the mill developer has a productivity of 1. A great programmer might be a 10. A poor programmer might be a -1. Yes, that’s right: put an average programmer and a poor programmer in a team and they will cancel each other for a net productivity of 0. A rock star agile developer, on the other hand, might be a 30. And yes, that’s right, a single rock star developer might be the equivalent of a rather large project in productivity.
Background
This blog post was inspired by a really thought provoking tweet by Arnaud Bailly:
Comparing developers to football or rock stars implies they should be coding 5% of their time and drill remaining 95%.
— Arnaud Bailly (@abailly) 13 november 2014
Perhaps you can help me answer the following questions?
- How are actual rock stars or football stars different from software development stars?
- Why do I keep talking about rock star agile developers and not rock star software developers?
- What should you do to become a rock star agile developer? [bibcite key=”citeulike:13429263″]
- How do you create an environment where these rock stars thrive and stay? [bibcite key=”citeulike:7570337,citeulike:13532852″]
References
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Image sources
- 1200px-Pair_programming_1[1]: Lisamarie Babik - Ted & Ian Uploaded by Edward via Wikimedia Commons | CC BY 2.0
