Clear Horizons' Market Research Study Finds Code Quality Remains a Leading Cause for Concern among Development Managers; Over 50 Percent of Development Managers Experience Software Failures in Released Code.

PRINCETON, N.J. -- Clear Horizons, a consultative research firm specializing in the consumer and business-to-business technology markets, surveyed 216 Java(TM) software development managers, who oversee teams of five or more developers, and found the overriding issue with code quality is the inability to minimize bugs before the code is released. The study, commissioned by Enerjy Software, reveals over 65 percent of development managers are frustrated with software bugs found in released code.

The study identifies four major obstacles that impede development managers from working to improve the quality of code their development teams produce; including quality tracking that starts too late, lack of clearly defined metrics, inefficient code reviews, and the inability to coach / manage individual developers. In an effort to address these four major challenges, development managers pointed to three specific areas that require improvement; tracking and training developer behaviors, developing metrics to measure code quality and integrating these procedures into their developers' existing toolsets.

"Development managers are looking to fill a void by finding a quality measurement system that will introduce solid quality metrics, help to track and train new hires, and continue to work within their existing toolsets," said Andy Cross, president of Clear Horizons. "Our research discovered that the ability to monitor the quality of a project early on gives development managers a greater sense of control to adhere to deadlines while meeting both internal standards and an external customer's requirements."

The report finds that 40 percent of development managers designate time for code reviews in less than half their projects, and less than 28 percent routinely conduct code quality tests across all their projects. When code quality is evaluated, 29 percent don't begin measuring until the project is more than half complete. The study also found that 69 percent of development managers are concerned with their current code review processes, and 40 percent find these code reviews to be inefficient, wasting valuable production time.

According to Clear Horizons, a majority of software errors are attributed to new developers being unaware of a company's policies and metrics for measuring code quality. Over half of the respondents expressed the need to track and identify these problems earlier in the development process. The report goes on to show that over 69 percent of development managers are frustrated by developers not adhering to Java best-quality practices, resulting in potentially ill-fated software being released to the customer.

"The ability to establish a well-defined set of quality metrics for coding and a measurement system that helps to define these metrics and detect errors earlier in the development cycle, will allow development managers to focus on more frequent and thorough training procedures," said Cross. "As a result, development managers are searching for a solution to help minimize software coding failures and/or bugs in their Java code earlier in the application development lifecycle."

To download the Clear Horizons market research report visit www.enerjy.com or in North and Latin America and Asia contact: Tara Lefave 978-816-6229, or email [e-mail], and in Europe, Middle East and Africa, contact: Vicky Lincoln [phone], or email [e-mail].

About Clear Horizons

Clear Horizons, a Rosetta Marketing Strategies Company, is a consultative research firm that specializes in successfully positioning existing products and ensuring the success of new products in the consumer and business to-business technology markets. Clear Horizons provides quantitative custom and syndicated studies that inform marketing, product development, communications, and sales management opportunities that drive marketplace advantage. Clear Horizons is based in Princeton, New Jersey.

Clear Horizons' President, Andy Cross, is a 25+ sales, marketing, and research veteran with a resume that covers tenure at Young & Rubicam (1978 to 1980), Pepsi-Cola - Vice President Marketing/Business Unit Manager (1982 to 1994), Nabisco - Senior VP Sales & Marketing (1994 to 1996), CMO of Arch Communications (the nation's largest wireless paging carrier - 1996 to 1998), CEO of Franklin Electronic Publishers, and Founder of Rosetta Marketing Strategies' Technology Practice (1999 to 2003).

Brad Wood, a senior consultant at Clear Horizons, is a graduate of Princeton University where he studied computer programming. At Clear Horizons, he focuses on developing new product strategies and go-to-market tactics for hardware manufacturers and software development companies. His additional freelance experience in the coding space, as well as a specialization within Clear Horizons, helps to provide additional insights into the needs of modern programmers and developers.