Engaging the developer ecosystem
October 3, 2018
October 3, 2018
Developers are the heartbeat of digital innovation, making a thriving developer ecosystem critically important to the success of any platform or technology. Industry leading companies recognize the need to build a strong relationship with the developer community, but many continue to struggle with how to do it effectively. The first challenge is understanding the variety of players. The developer ecosystem includes company employees, large and small partners, full-time independent developers and a range of part-time, opportunistic developers. Their wants and needs vary greatly, but are specific and highly nuanced.
Through proprietary research with more than 750 US-based developers, Accenture learned what’s important to developers and how they access resources. We gathered developer perspectives on how well 15 of the top platforms perform against their expectations, how ecosystems stack up against each other and which ones are setting industry standards. The study gives companies a novel perspective to benchmark their developer ecosystem against and progress toward best-in-class developer offerings.
Insights from the 2018 Accenture Developer Ecosystem Survey reveal that developers are pragmatic in their wants and needs.
74%
Want to learn new skills, or improve current skills, when engaging with a developer ecosystem.
64%
Want to make money through engaging with a developer ecosystem.
47%
Think all developer ecosystems are pretty much the same in terms of usefulness.
70%
Agree that a platform offering a truly differentiated and meaningful developer ecosystem would get a much larger part of their business.
Platform companies that stand out among their competitors offer developers the chance to solve challenging problems in interesting ways. They:
In return, the developers they engage help to drive user acquisition and product usage that leads to the platform’s revenue growth and rising market valuation.