Content
This blog post will explore Gartner's top five software engineering trends for 2024. They are set to make a significant impact.
- Software Engineering Intelligence
- AI-Augmented Development
- Green Software Engineering
- Platform Engineering
- Industry Cloud Platforms
The Software Engineering Trends Shaping 2024
Date: August 16, 2024
Software Engineering Intelligence
What It Is: Software engineering intelligence platforms give leaders clear, data-driven insights. They show how teams spend time, use resources, and progress on projects. These platforms help leaders make better decisions. By analyzing data from the tools engineers use daily, these platforms empower leaders to make better decisions, delivering more value to customers.
What is happening: These platforms are vital for companies. They provide a unified view of everything in the engineering process. They track metrics like velocity, flow, and quality. This helps leaders make decisions that drive business value.
Looking forward: Only 5% of organizations use these platforms now. Gartner predicts it will rise to 50% by 2027. This shows a growing focus on using data to boost productivity and make better decisions (Gartner, 2024).
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AI-Augmented Development
What It Is: AI-augmented development leverages AI tools to enhance developers' productivity, enabling them to work faster, smarter, and with fewer errors. By automating repetitive tasks like code generation, testing, debugging, and documentation, AI streamlines and accelerates the development process. It also helps developers learn from existing code, find relevant resources, and collaborate more effectively (Patel, 2024).
What’s Happening: AI is transforming software development by streamlining the design, coding, and testing processes. Integrating AI tools directly into their workflow allows developers to work more efficiently. As Joachim Herschmann noted, investing in AI-augmented development can significantly boost productivity, control costs, and deliver greater value to software teams (Gartner, 2024).
Why It Matters: Software engineering leaders want to speed up development. But they want to avoid excessive costs. A recent Gartner survey found that 58% of organizations are using, or plan to use, generative AI in the next year to cut costs. AI is no longer a trendy term. It is a powerful tool that boosts productivity and adds excellent value (Gartner, 2024).
Green Software Engineering
What It Is: Green software engineering focuses on developing software with minimal environmental impact. This involves making energy-efficient choices throughout the development process, such as selecting the right architecture and design patterns, and optimizing algorithms, data structures, and infrastructure. The goal is to enhance software performance while reducing energy consumption.
What is happening: Sustainability is now key in software engineering. It is not a nice-to-have. Green software engineering aims to lower the carbon footprint of software development. It requires making smart decisions at every stage, from architecture to infrastructure.
Why It Matters: By 2027, 30% of large firms will need sustainable software, according to Gartner. As AI apps use more energy, we must make software more carbon efficient. This is vital for organizations that care about sustainability (Gartner, 2024).
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Platform Engineering
What It Is: Platform engineering uses DevOps principles. It seeks to boost security, compliance, and efficiency. It also aims to speed up the delivery of business value. Its goal is to improve developer experiences and offer self-service options. These must be within a secure, well-managed framework. This approach combines a shift in mindset with the use of specific tools and systems to support it (Kulla-Mader & Lantz, 2024).
What’s Happening: Platform engineering is all about making life easier for developers. Standardized internal platforms can reduce developers' cognitive load. This lets them focus more on building great software. This leads to a smoother development process and higher job satisfaction.
Looking Forward: The adoption of platform engineering is on the rise. Gartner estimates that, by 2026, 80% of large firms will have platform engineering teams. This trend shows a need for scalable, efficient development environments. They must keep up with modern software engineering's demands (Gartner, 2024).
Industry Cloud Platforms
What It Is: Vertical cloud platforms are industry specific. They combine software, platform, and infrastructure services to deliver tailored solutions. These platforms provide businesses with greater adaptability beyond public cloud services. They can manage workloads better and adapt to their industry's unique needs, such as operations, data, and compliance.
What’s Happening: Industry cloud platforms (ICPs) tailor solutions. They meet the specific needs of different industries. They provide the agility and flexibility to handle today's fast-changing business world.
Why It Matters: By 2027, over 70% of enterprises will use ICPs, up from under 15% in 2023, says Gartner. This trend shows the need for industry-specific solutions. They help businesses adapt and stay competitive (Gartner, 2024).
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References
Gartner. (2024, May 16). Gartner identifies the top five strategic technology trends. https://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2024-05-16-gartner-identifies-the-top-five-strategic-technology-trends-in-software-engineering-for-2024
Kulla-Mader, J., & Lantz, C. (2024, July 24). What is platform engineering?. Microsoft Learn. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/platform-engineering/what-is-platform-engineering
Patel, Y. (2024, January 3). What is AI-augmented development?. Medium. https://medium.com/@laners.org/what-is-ai-augmented-development-97d412f97ed0
Thumbnail image by Google DeepMind
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