As a rule, developers love coding, solving problems, and coming up with ingenious solutions. But most have a thousand and one different distractions taking their focus away from the work they enjoy, breaking up their workflows, and making it difficult to get development done. Mel Chua, front-end engineer for ZenHub, was a project manager in a former life. âMy thing was always trying to play defense for the developers,â he says. But not every development team has a linebacker covering for them, and assaults on their time are usually multi-pronged.

We spoke with several developers from the ZenHub team and surveyed another 30 developers working at different companies, across various industries, on their productivity habits. The following insights are real problems real developers around the world are facing today. While many of the issues they touched on appear unrelated, they often share underlying causes. Fixing those causes is the best â and often the only â way to clear those hurdles for good.
1. Unnecessary and Poorly Scheduled Meetings Eat Time
The most efficient meeting is the one that doesnât happen. So, the first step to running a good meeting is making sure itâs necessary to have one in the first place. Thereâs nothing duller than ending up in âa meeting that should be an email,â as one developer says.
Many developersâ problems with meetings have nothing to do with the meetings themselves, but how theyâre scheduled. If their work is constantly being broken up by meetings, even useful ones, they lose those long, contiguous stretches of time they need to be productive.
Features like ZenHubâs planning poker, where everyone can vote on story points on their own time outside of a meeting, help eliminate meetings that interrupt developersâ focus. If the estimations line up, thereâs no need to meet. And developers can provide their estimates on their own time when itâs convenient for them. After all, the best code is written when developers are given the time they need to write great code.

2. Unclear and Redundant Communications Create Confusion
One of the great joys of working from home is getting to wear the business mullet: work on top, party on the bottom.
But working from home can be a double-edged sword. Developers get bombarded with messages because nobody can see how busy they are. In-person signals developers previously used to show they are in âdo-not-disturb modeâ, like putting on big headphones and their sweaterâs hood up, no longer work in the digital world. Tools can help by letting you set your status to busy, but messaging tools often end up turning into a âbig productivity sink,â says one developer. âThey make it too easy to get derailed.â
When information is centralized, however, a lot of that communication becomes unnecessary. So do meetings. Tools that bring disparate data points together into intuitive interfaces let developers focus on developing.
At ZenHub, we keep our source of truth as close to the code as possible. All requirements, updates, and communication are stored right on the issue, so developers arenât running to additional apps on a treasure hunt for context. This is also great for product folks, as they donât need to chase after developers for status updates in additional tools.

Another developer mentioned that âcreating an actionable task from a higher goalâ can be an exercise in frustration, especially when stories are too vague or goals arenât clearly defined.
While thatâs unavoidable, at least if all the information is in one place, itâs easier to correct and work on the story once it becomes clearer. Plus, if the updated information automatically propagates, thereâs no need to send a mass email and less potential to âreply allâ to it.
3. Outdated and Ineffective Tools Slow Development
Nobody would be surprised if carpenters had a hard time doing their job with rubber hammers or blunt nails. âSlow development tools, computer, internet, hardware devices, build systems, and general office softwareâ are all sources of frustration, says ZenHub developer and Head of Engineering, Ev Haus. âIf things are getting in my way of cranking out code, it frustrates me and slows me down.â
To put it bluntly, developers donât want to use tools that donât work and make their lives more difficult. Ask any developer about a tool they find frustrating to use, and theyâll provide you with many points on how they would and could have built it better.
Choosing the right tools can be just as important as having powerful ones. Even more so. Tools like ZenHubâs Workflow Automation grease the wheels when tasks change hands. And roadmaps help with compiling epics into one super-project that shows developers the big picture, whoâs working on what, and how far along they are, and provides the answers to a lot of questions in one neat package.

4. Tedious Tasks Tyrannize Time and Trample Thought
Like any other group of professionals, developers have their own quirks and personal preferences. And they donât always want to work nine to five. Unfortunately, the way their workflows are structured often doesnât align with how they work. One developer says, âI often find myself coding in the evening because then all the meetings are done.â
Every developer has also had a very productive couple of hours spent staring out the window, gears turning. These long stretches of silence and stillness are as critical as stalking time is to a cat hunting a bird â though usually less bloody.
But whether theyâre coding or thinking, busy work is annoying for developers. So, tools that help eliminate tedious-but-necessary tasks give developers time to concentrate on crucial aspects of software design.
For example, in a past life, Mel spent much of his days either in meetings or copy-pasting acceptance criteria from one tool to another. It was dull work but needed to be done to keep everyone on the same page. Today, ZenHub centralizes information for him so heâs always up-to-date with what the project goals are. Better yet, all of this information is available in GitHub, right where he works. That way, he doesnât waste time developing something unnecessary or lose time that could be dedicated to working on deliverables.

5. More Sources of Truth, More Problems
The meetings, the messages, the tools, the workflows: theyâre all ways to get to the truth. But if you have acceptance criteria in a ticket, a design that doesnât match those criteria, and a product manager with a bunch of notes that donât match either, Mel asks, âhow do you align all those and keep them in sync?â
Well, with a lot of meetings, messages, confusion, and frustration. Developers are dragged into discussions, deliveries are delayed, deadlines pass, and developers get discouraged.
When an entire workflow is structured around one source of truth, other problems tend to disappear. Meetings are streamlined and less frequent because everyone is on the same page. Messages become fewer and further between.
Having a one-stop shop like ZenHub to hit up for the source of truth âhelps people focus on more creative things,â says Mel. For developers, thatâs really what itâs all about.
Talk With a Community of Truth-Seekers
Developers are a creative bunch, and when faced with tough, unfamiliar problems, often the best thing to do is to collaborate with other developers. The ZenHub Community is always bouncing around ideas of how to work better and tackle new problems. Join the conversation, share your ideas, and maybe get a few new ones.