Finding Market Opportunities in the Development Tool Space

One of the fundamentals of market and strategic product planning is to identify areas that are perceived of as being highly important but which weak product solutions. This is true for software development tools as well as for any other product. In our latest Global Development Survey we compared the amount of importance developers place on sixteen different tool types with the degree to which they are satisfied with the offerings.

The result was a quadrant graph that places tool types (like performance tools, real-time event processing tools, ALMs, etc) within quadrants depending on their ratings from developers in relation to importance and satisfaction. Since importance is the x axis and satisfaction is the y axis, the place to look for product improvement opportunities is the lower right hand quadrant. Here we will find the types of tools that are most important but are also the least satisfying.

Not surprisingly, this differs from one geographical region to another. For instance, in North America developers are not that happy with GUI frameworks though they feel they’re important. In APAC the developers are also disenchanted with this type of tool, though they consider them to be a little less important, and in the EMEA region they are happy with these tools but assign less importance to them than in the other regions.

But there’s one type of tool that’s squarely in the lower right hand quadrant in all regions and that’s performance tools. Across regions performance tools were ranked as very important and also as lacking in satisfaction. Why performance analysis tools? It’s hard to tell without a deeper investigation. There are plenty of them on the market, but it still presents as a prime opportunity for someone with a better concept.

In any case, the quadrant graph is an excellent way to analyze the market for the type of product you’re creating. See our graph for North America here:

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