Software Developers’ Perceptions of Productivity: An Industry-focused Study
Abstract
Context: Developer productivity is a critical factor of software project success and, by extension, a key driver of organizational performance and software quality in software engineering. In the era of Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI), understanding the developers’ perception of productivity becomes paramount for a software organization seeking to adopt GenAI tools. Objective: This paper aims to examine developers’ perception of productivity, focusing on its measurement and the expected impact of adopting GenAI. Method: We conducted two semi-structured focus groups with software developers from a large science and technology institute. We also administered a confirmatory questionnaire to support the verification of our findings. The collected data were analyzed using content analysis. Results:We identified five key productivity factors: quality, expectations, deadlines, progress, and efficiency, including distinct measurement systems for coding, code review, and documentation activities. Participants consistently emphasized the potential of GenAI to streamline and enhance a range of routine development tasks, albeit with certain limitations regarding their use. Conclusion: Our findings indicate that productivity constitutes a complex multidimensional construct influenced by interrelated factors. Moreover, GenAI emerge as a transformative technology whose impacts on productivity require deeper investigation in future studies, particularly regarding balancing efficiency gains with the preservation of technical abilities.
Keywords:
Productivity, Industry, Large Language Models, Qualitative Study
References
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Nicole Forsgren, Margaret-Anne Storey, Chandra Maddila, Thomas Zimmermann, Brian Houck, and Jenna Butler. 2021. The SPACE of Developer Productivity: There’s more to it than you think. Queue 19, 1 (2021), 20–48.
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Ciera Jaspan and Caitlin Sadowski. 2019. No single metric captures productivity. Rethinking Productivity in Software Engineering (2019), 13–20.
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Anh Nguyen-Duc, Beatriz Cabrero-Daniel, Adam Przybylek, Chetan Arora, Dron Khanna, Tomas Herda, Usman Rafiq, Jorge Melegati, Eduardo Guerra, Kai-Kristian Kemell, et al. 2023. Generative Artificial Intelligence for Software Engineering–A Research Agenda. arXiv preprint arXiv:2310.18648 (2023).
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Caitlin Sadowski and Thomas Zimmermann. 2019. Rethinking productivity in software engineering. Springer Nature.
Robin C Sickles and Valentin Zelenyuk. 2019. Measurement of productivity and efficiency. Cambridge University Press.
David W Stewart and Prem Shamdasani. 2017. Online focus groups. Journal of advertising 46, 1 (2017), 48–60.
Margaret-Anne Storey, Brian Houck, and Thomas Zimmermann. 2022. How developers and managers define and trade productivity for quality. In Proceedings of the 15th International Conference on Cooperative and Human Aspects of Software Engineering. 26–35.
Anselm Strauss, Juliet Corbin, et al. 1990. Basics of qualitative research. Vol. 15. sage Newbury Park, CA.
Bart van Ark and Dirk Pilat. 2023. Navigating the Nexus of Science, Technology, Innovation and Productivity: Productivity Puzzles Blog. [link] The Productivity Institute.
StefanWagner and Florian Deissenboeck. 2019. Defining productivity in software engineering. Rethinking productivity in software engineering (2019), 29–38.
Stefan Wagner and Emerson Murphy-Hill. 2019. Factors that influence productivity: A checklist. Rethinking productivity in software engineering (2019), 69–84.
Thales Haddad Novaes de Andrade, Lucas Rodrigo da Silva, and Leda Gitahy. 2013. New policies for science and technology and the impacts on public research institutes: a case study in Brazil. Brazilian Political Science Review 7 (2013), 37–61.
Leonardo Banh, Florian Holldack, and Gero Strobel. 2025. Copiloting the future: How generative AI transforms Software Engineering. Information and Software Technology 183 (2025), 107751.
Sussy Bayona, Jose A Calvo-Manzano, and Tomás San Feliu. 2012. Critical success factors in software process improvement: a systematic review. In International Conference on Software Process Improvement and Capability Determination. Springer, 1–12.
Tuomas Bazzan, Benjamin Olojo, Przemysław Majda, Thomas Kelly, Murat Yilmaz, Gerard Marks, and Paul M Clarke. 2024. Analysing the Role of Generative AI in Software Engineering-Results from an MLR. In European Conference on Software Process Improvement. Springer, 163–180.
Edna Dias Canedo and Giovanni Almeida Santos. 2019. Factors affecting software development productivity: An empirical study. In Proceedings of the XXXIII Brazilian Symposium on Software Engineering. 307–316.
Murilo Coelho, Isabelle Reinbold, Lizie Sancho, Matheus Paixao, Allysson Allex Araújo, and Sávio Freire. 2025. Replication package for the Paper “Software Developers’ Perceptions of Productivity: An Industry-focused Study”. [link]
Mariana Coutinho, Lorena Marques, Anderson Santos, Marcio Dahia, Cesar França, and Ronnie de Souza Santos. 2024. The role of generative ai in software development productivity: A pilot case study. In Proceedings of the 1st ACM International Conference on AI-Powered Software. 131–138.
Aline de Campos, Jorge Melegati, Nicolas Nascimento, Rafael Chanin, Afonso Sales, and Igor Wiese. 2024. Some things never change: how far generative AI can really change software engineering practice. arXiv preprint arXiv:2406.09725 (2024).
Peter F Drucker. 1999. Knowledge-worker productivity: The biggest challenge. California management review 41, 2 (1999), 79–94.
Carlos Henrique C Duarte. 2019. The quest for productivity in software engineering: A practitioners systematic literature review. In 2019 IEEE/ACM International Conference on Software and System Processes (ICSSP). IEEE, 145–154.
Carlos Henrique C Duarte. 2022. Software productivity in practice: A systematic mapping study. Software 1, 2 (2022), 164–214.
Nicole Forsgren, Margaret-Anne Storey, Chandra Maddila, Thomas Zimmermann, Brian Houck, and Jenna Butler. 2021. The SPACE of Developer Productivity: There’s more to it than you think. Queue 19, 1 (2021), 20–48.
Armstrong Foundjem, Ellis Eghan, and Bram Adams. 2021. Onboarding vs. diversity, productivity and quality—empirical study of the openstack ecosystem. In 2021 IEEE/ACM 43rd International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE). IEEE, 1033–1045.
Daria Glushkova. 2023. The influence of Artificial intelligence on productivity in Software development. Ph.D. Dissertation. Politecnico di Torino.
Ahmed E Hassan, Dayi Lin, Gopi Krishnan Rajbahadur, Keheliya Gallaba, Filipe Roseiro Cogo, Boyuan Chen, Haoxiang Zhang, Kishanthan Thangarajah, Gustavo Oliva, Jiahuei Lin, et al. 2024. Rethinking software engineering in the era of foundation models: A curated catalogue of challenges in the development of trustworthy fmware. In Companion Proceedings of the 32nd ACM International Conference on the Foundations of Software Engineering. 294–305.
Adrián Hernández-López, Ricardo Colomo-Palacios, and Ángel García-Crespo. 2012. Productivity in software engineering: A study of its meanings for practitioners: Understanding the concept under their standpoint. In 7th Iberian Conference on Information Systems and Technologies (CISTI 2012). IEEE, 1–6.
Sarah Inman, Sarah D’Angelo, and Bogdan Vasilescu. 2024. Developer productivity for humans, part 8: Creativity in software engineering. IEEE Software 41, 2 (2024), 11–16.
Ciera Jaspan and Caitlin Sadowski. 2019. No single metric captures productivity. Rethinking Productivity in Software Engineering (2019), 13–20.
Robert L Kahn. 1960. Psychologists in administration (A symposium): III. Productivity and job satisfaction. Personnel psychology (1960).
Klaus Krippendorff. 2019. Content Analysis: An Introduction to Its Methodology. DOI: 10.4135/9781071878781
Richard A Krueger. 2014. Focus groups: A practical guide for applied research. Sage publications.
Rui Li, Jing Rao, and LiangyongWan. 2022. The digital economy, enterprise digital transformation, and enterprise innovation. Managerial and Decision Economics 43, 7 (2022), 2875–2886.
Bojana Lobe. 2017. Best practices for synchronous online focus groups. A new era in focus group research: Challenges, innovation and practice (2017), 227–250.
André N Meyer, Laura E Barton, Gail C Murphy, Thomas Zimmermann, and Thomas Fritz. 2017. Thework life of developers: Activities, switches and perceived productivity. IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering 43, 12 (2017), 1178–1193.
André N Meyer, Thomas Fritz, Gail C Murphy, and Thomas Zimmermann. 2014. Software developers’ perceptions of productivity. In Proceedings of the 22nd ACM SIGSOFT International Symposium on Foundations of Software Engineering. 19–29.
Kanthi MN Muthiah and Samuel H Huang. 2006. A review of literature on manufacturing systems productivity measurement and improvement. International Journal of Industrial and Systems Engineering 1, 4 (2006), 461–484.
Anh Nguyen-Duc, Beatriz Cabrero-Daniel, Adam Przybylek, Chetan Arora, Dron Khanna, Tomas Herda, Usman Rafiq, Jorge Melegati, Eduardo Guerra, Kai-Kristian Kemell, et al. 2023. Generative Artificial Intelligence for Software Engineering–A Research Agenda. arXiv preprint arXiv:2310.18648 (2023).
Oxford Economics and Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany. 2021. The State of Scientific Research Productivity: How To Sustain A Critical Engine of Human Progress. [link] Consulting Report.
Paul Ralph, Nauman bin Ali, Sebastian Baltes, Domenico Bianculli, Jessica Diaz, Yvonne Dittrich, Neil Ernst, Michael Felderer, Robert Feldt, Antonio Filieri, Breno Bernard Nicolau de França, Carlo Alberto Furia, Greg Gay, Nicolas Gold, Daniel Graziotin, Pinjia He, Rashina Hoda, Natalia Juristo, Barbara Kitchenham, Valentina Lenarduzzi, Jorge Martínez, Jorge Melegati, Daniel Mendez, Tim Menzies, Jefferson Molleri, Dietmar Pfahl, Romain Robbes, Daniel Russo, Nyyti Saarimäki, Federica Sarro, Davide Taibi, Janet Siegmund, Diomidis Spinellis, Miroslaw Staron, Klaas Stol, Margaret-Anne Storey, Davide Taibi, Damian Tamburri, Marco Torchiano, Christoph Treude, Burak Turhan, Xiaofeng Wang, and Sira Vegas. 2020. Empirical Standards for Software Engineering Research. arXiv:2010.03525 [cs.SE] [link]
Caitlin Sadowski and Thomas Zimmermann. 2019. Rethinking productivity in software engineering. Springer Nature.
Robin C Sickles and Valentin Zelenyuk. 2019. Measurement of productivity and efficiency. Cambridge University Press.
David W Stewart and Prem Shamdasani. 2017. Online focus groups. Journal of advertising 46, 1 (2017), 48–60.
Margaret-Anne Storey, Brian Houck, and Thomas Zimmermann. 2022. How developers and managers define and trade productivity for quality. In Proceedings of the 15th International Conference on Cooperative and Human Aspects of Software Engineering. 26–35.
Anselm Strauss, Juliet Corbin, et al. 1990. Basics of qualitative research. Vol. 15. sage Newbury Park, CA.
Bart van Ark and Dirk Pilat. 2023. Navigating the Nexus of Science, Technology, Innovation and Productivity: Productivity Puzzles Blog. [link] The Productivity Institute.
StefanWagner and Florian Deissenboeck. 2019. Defining productivity in software engineering. Rethinking productivity in software engineering (2019), 29–38.
Stefan Wagner and Emerson Murphy-Hill. 2019. Factors that influence productivity: A checklist. Rethinking productivity in software engineering (2019), 69–84.
Published
2025-11-04
How to Cite
COELHO, Murilo; REINBOLD, Isabelle; SANCHO, Lizie; PAIXAO, Matheus; ARAÚJO, Allysson Allex; FREIRE, Sávio.
Software Developers’ Perceptions of Productivity: An Industry-focused Study. In: BRAZILIAN SOFTWARE QUALITY SYMPOSIUM (SBQS), 24. , 2025, São José dos Campos/SP.
Anais [...].
Porto Alegre: Sociedade Brasileira de Computação,
2025
.
p. 12-22.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.5753/sbqs.2025.13759.
