Developer Visibility and the Genesis of an Immune System for Software

Two things development teams always need: software quality and testing. It improves the output teams need throughout the software development lifecycle, and what they deliver for their users. It’s why SmartBear has been synonymous with quality for over a decade. Earlier this year, SmartBear began to roll out its vision for the next stage in the evolution of its software portfolio. Key word being “vision.” Quality always remains, but as portfolios have broadened, new capabilities have emerged, which brings new potential – the potential to solve more significant problems and help our customers in a more meaningful way: Developer visibility.

An eye on the future – and present

What’s the significance? It brings far better optics to the software teams throughout the SDLC, and improves the overall experience for users. This powerful new generation of the portfolio will open the scope on what’s happening with software pre-production within APIs and microservices quality and post-production and how the code behaves once its launched into the wild. 

• Beyond the direct benefits at the grassroots level, developer visibility presents a milestone in what some are calling ‘digital immunity’, that is a system that provides developers with the insights to quickly remediate software defects and avoid impact on users.

At SmartBear, my role is in go-to market and leading our sales team into marketplaces. In the end, this ties my teams and me to a product purchase. Although developer visibility and the software immune systems are metaphors to explain the emerging benefits of the portfolio, to gain those benefits, products must be purchased and deployed. The good news is that it already exists in solutions that organizations, who leverage Jira as their DevOps central nervous system, are familiar with and love.

Visibility in action

Imagine Zephyr and other testing solutions have become a core component of your Atlassian Jira experience. These are the foundations of your software immune system. Testing the right things, leveraging automation, and going deeper into the more advanced analytics – like the Zephyr Scale traceability report to gain better coverage – are all measures to keep bugs out of your software. Further, we’ve recently brought BugSnag to Jira and have enjoyed fast growth, with more than 300 installations of the solution within the first months. With BugSnag, after deployment developers’ ability to see into errors and detect bugs starts to emerge. It provides more advanced features to your software immune system.

As we advance, we have a simple navigation point

All of it comes back to developer visibility. We’re helping the best Atlassian partners in the business take up more of this solution. We will work with not only them, but also customers directly, to continue the advance of software quality. If you’re going to be at Atlassian Team 23 this year, please stop by, say hello, and let us give you a peek at what’s coming in person. Otherwise, stay tuned as we begin telling our story’s next chapter.