In today’s rapidly evolving tech landscape, software engineering management stands as a cornerstone of organizational success. Recognizing the importance of this, we recently hosted a dinner at Prime & Provisions in Chicago, in partnership with ELC (Engineering Leadership Community) and West Monroe. The evening was dedicated to discussing the 5 critical pillars of software engineering management, drawing from our e-book, “The 5 Elements of Software Engineering Management.” This gathering brought together R&D leaders from diverse industries and company sizes to share experiences, challe ..read more

One of the most common questions software leaders are asked is, “When is it going to ship?” The answer is important for all sorts of reasons from coordinating marketing campaigns, keeping commitments to customers, and unlocking sales opportunities. The focus on dates creates an incentive for leaders to look for ways to measure and improve the predictability of their organization, however, software delivery is notoriously difficult to predict, and efforts to measure teams on their predictability risk promoting unhealthy cultures and incentivizing the wrong behaviors. We challenged ourselves to ..read more

For the last few years, everyone has been talking about capital D, capital E: “Developer Experience.” While there has been a lot of discussion about developer experience as a concept and as a product — most often in the form of qualitative experience surveys — it’s not exactly a new idea. Engineering leaders always ask engineers in one-on-one meetings what could be better about their work environment and what is blocking them from doing better work. They work to identify issues that lead to bottlenecks or lost productivity, and strive to address those challenges. Over time, larger companies t ..read more

We’re thrilled to announce that for the eighth consecutive quarter, Jellyfish has been named a Leader in G2’s Software Development Analytics Tools Grid. Not only have we secured the top spot, but we have also earned the highest user satisfaction rating among our competitors. Jellyfish has also maintained a leader role within the Mid-Market Relationship Index for Software Development Analytics Tools, achieving a score of 9.48/10, the highest among competitors. The relationship index is calculated using four factors: Ease of Doing Business: Customers’ reported ease of doing business with the se ..read more

GLOW is the annual Jellyfish summit that brings together leaders in engineering, product, and finance, to share industry best practices, challenges, and insights. On May 15, 2024, GLOW 2024, drew nearly 1,000 registrants and featured an opening keynote, exciting product updates, a fireside chat with Roblox CTO, a guest keynote by TIME’s kid of the Year, Gitanjali Rao, multiple breakout sessions, the announcement of this year’s Illuminate Awards winners, and the launch of the Jellyfish swag store. During the opening keynote, Andrew Lau, Jellyfish CEO, emphasized that traditional frameworks, foc ..read more

For decades, engineers were expected to take orders and build products without shaping the business as a whole. Today, that’s no longer the case. Engineering leaders and their teams are now strategic partners, helping to guide strategy, grow revenue, and ensure the organization works as efficiently as possible. Jellyfish has tracked this evolution over the past five years through our annual State of Engineering Management Report. This year, we aimed to see how engineering teams have evolved in the ways they organize, measure, and staff their work by surveying 604 CTOs, engineering leaders, man ..read more

Engineering leaders, how many times have you found yourself in this scenario:  You need to make a decision about a critical project. You open the spreadsheet everyone is supposed to be using to track metrics and progress across projects — maybe it’s hooked up to Tableau or another platform. You spend a few hours analyzing the data, maybe making manual updates because the data isn’t quite right due to numerous variables – only to discover that one of your peers distrusted the report and has spun up an alternative system that everyone is now using instead.  It’s maddening, right? And i ..read more

GenAI coding tools have been top of mind for engineering organizations for the last 18 months. Yet despite all of the predictions and hot takes, we’ve had little hard data to explain what’s actually happening. With the recent release of GitHub’s Copilot API into public preview, we now have visibility into their impact. Engineering organizations are asking two questions about GenAI. Executives and board members want to know, “How much value is AI delivering?” The engineers themselves have a different question: “How is AI going to impact my career?” Jellyfish is delivering answers to both questi ..read more

What does a Chief Technology Officer do? When I talk to groups of engineering leaders, I’m sometimes surprised by the response I get to this question. No two answers will be the same, and the definition often boils down to a variation of taking orders from other areas of the business. Instead of having a seat at the table, CTOs and other engineering leaders are focused more on how to manage requests from their executive peers. The reality is that engineering leaders should be strategic partners with their executive peers. Instead of taking requests from sales, marketing and product leaders in ..read more

One of the most common things an engineering leader will hear from their team is, “I don’t understand how my work actually matters.” And that lack of clarity leads to dissatisfaction — individual contributors struggle to connect their work to the broader goals of the business, leading to a poor developer experience and increased employee churn. But that isn’t even the worst possible outcome. In the worst-case scenario, an engineer might come up with their own narrative around the work they’re doing. “The only reason I have to do this is because the sales team wants it.” “This project doesn’t ..read more