MORRISVILLE, NC /BUSINESS WIRE/ -- 6th Sense Analytics Inc., a pioneer in automating software development metrics, announced the availability of a free public resource for understanding trends in the software development community, based on data collected from the 6th Sense Analytics user community. This data is empirically derived from the use of the 6th Sense Analytics solution and aggregated and de-identified to protect user privacy.
"Our community data provides insight into key patterns and trends in tool adoption, language penetration, and the specific work patterns of developers today," said Greg Burnell, CEO of 6th Sense Analytics. "The 6th Sense Analytics solution brings transparency to an organization's development process while also contributing to community data for benchmarking performance goals or learning more about the methods being used across the development community. Our subscribers have access to this community data, and we're pleased to now share aspects of it with the public at large."
The 6th Sense Analytics solution automatically and unobtrusively collects metrics about the execution of the software development process via lightweight sensors residing on team members' desktops and shared repositories (e.g., source code management and ticketing systems). 6th Sense Analytics is the "only solution that provides truly automated and empirical insight into the software development process."
6th Sense Analytics focuses on two important units of measure: active time and flow time. Active time is a measure of the time spent actively engaged in development tools, working on activities such as coding, debugging, and unit testing. Flow time indicates the level of focus by measuring uninterrupted periods of active time (20 min. or more) during which developers are fully engaged in a focused activity and at the height of their productivity and creativity. The principles of flow time are supported by substantial academic and management research and were popularized in Peopleware, by Tom DeMarco and Timothy Lister, a seminal book on productivity in project work.
6th Sense Analytics community data uses both active time and flow time to yield insights such as:
- Percent of active time per tool per week—this metric shows the rate and growth of integrated development environments and other tools (e.g., Visual Studio and Eclipse) over the past month.
- Percent of active time per language per week—this metric shows the penetration and growth of key development languages (e.g., .NET and Java) over the past month.
- Percent of active time "in the flow" per week—this metric shows weekly trends over the past six weeks, revealing cyclicality or seasonality in focus and work patterns.
- Percent of active time "in the flow" per day—this metric shows day-of-the-week trends in level of focus and work patterns.
Previously, only 6th Sense Analytics subscribers had access to this community data. While subscribers will continue to have deeper visibility into community data, this represents the first time 6th Sense Analytics has made its data widely available to the software development industry at large.
This Software Development Community Data is publicly available on the company's Web site. The data will be updated weekly to provide ongoing insight into industry patterns and trends.
The 6th Sense Analytics Solution
6th Sense Analytics is a powerful and unique software-as-a-service solution for achieving accurate and consistent visibility across distributed software development projects. 6th Sense automatically and unobtrusively collects activity-based data from developer tools and delivers on-demand analytics to individuals and teams. This delivers insight into the time spent on specific activities and provides a basis for understanding team effort, productivity, and overall project velocity, ensuring software development projects are on time, on budget, and on target with business goals. All of this allows software development teams to improve their ability to deliver successful project outcomes, critical to the overall success of a globally distributed software development effort.
About 6th Sense Analytics Inc.
6th Sense Analytics Inc., a pioneer in automating software development metrics, gives developers and managers deep insight into their software development process by delivering accurate metrics without interrupting the software development lifecycle or changing the tools used. A 2007 winner of the coveted Jolt Productivity Award, 6th Sense Analytics uses an open and independent architecture that provides visibility into the status of distributed software projects. Founded in 2004 by a team of experienced software development executives, 6th Sense Analytics is a privately held company based near Research Triangle Park, NC. For more information, visit the company's Web site.