9 software development analytics tools for growth in 2024

How can you use data to improve software development? While plenty of metric-tracking and AI tools collect data on team performance, it falls on you to apply that data. Growing enterprises need a way to turn data into actionable insights—for that, you need software development analytics. 

Software development analytics tools offer insights into your workflows, time spent on tasks, and overall velocity. We'll rank the top nine platforms to improve your development and boost ROI. Along the way, we’ll define software analytics in more detail, share its benefits, and give tips to find the right tool.

Table of contents: 

• What are software development analytics tools?

• 9 best software engineering intelligence platforms

• Benefits of software development analytics

• How to pick the right software engineering intelligence platform

A software development analytics tool, (sometimes referred to as a software engineering intelligence platform), tracks your team’s progress during the development lifecycle. These platforms analyze the time spent on coding, bug reports, and business processes. Leaders can then study these insights to optimize development and prevent workflow issues. 

By tracking KPIs, analytics tools measure your progress toward a project’s goals. Using analytics reports and insights lets you gradually improve your performance and stay on schedule. This informed decision-making empowers teams to build better products faster.

Specifically, these tools allow you to:

• Track a project’s development velocity

• Identify bottlenecks and delays before they occur

• Measure each team member’s performance

• Compare the amount of time you spend on different tasks
• Avoid racking up technical debt

Software development analytics platforms offer a wide range of features. Here are some of the most popular functions analytics tools offer:

• Centralized dashboards: Dashboards organize information in one location. Dashboard management pages summarize performance data in shareable reports. 

• Data visualization: Graphs and charts help teams interpret data. Managers can diagram KPI changes over time by making custom charts. From there, developers use this information for data-driven decisions. 

• KPI monitoring: Analytics tools track metrics related to team and application performance. These platforms track cycle time, rework, queue time, and more. By gauging KPIs over a project lifecycle, you can measure improvements.

• Usage tracking: Analytics tools track how users interact with a product. By monitoring user engagement, developers can create better use cases. The platforms can even make UX suggestions to optimize product design or functionality.
• Error detection: Analytics tools catch bugs within your program’s code or performance errors. By providing this visibility, you can find issues early and efficiently.

Software development analytics tools assess multiple types of data. While platforms may focus on user data or production tracking, most cover a few types of analytics, such as:

• Performance tracking: Performance tracking analytics focus on your development processes. Essentially, these metrics examine how efficiently your team runs.

• Project management: Project management data reflects how well you coordinate teams and weigh priorities. You can improve project management by focusing on risks, opportunities to use AI in software development, and task management. 

• Code repositories: Code analytics tools review repositories of code from a project. Storing code in a centralized location allows for easier reviews and more chances to collaborate. 

• Objectives and key results (OKRs): OKR analytics track progress toward your business objectives. They find the best way to reach goals by reviewing team performance and development activities.

• Quality assurance: QA systems ensure a finished product meets customers’ expectations. QA tools improve usability, security, and functionality. Their issue-tracking features also assist your testing systems.

After careful research, feature tracking, and input from developers familiar with these tools, we compiled a list of the top nine developer analytics tools. Check out our list and find the best platform for your team.

Flow builds healthier teams by giving managers the tools to optimize their processes. Specifically, Flow tracks DORA analytics, software development KPIs, and investment insights from workflows. With this data displayed on one centralized dashboard, team managers can measure progress, refine processes, and reduce friction between engineers. 

Flow doesn’t only strive to track data, though—it helps you apply that data with actionable insights. Managers can use Flow for their teams’ professional development and empower them to deliver higher-quality products. Our reports and workflow analysis give tips to reduce delivery time and wasted effort. From onboarding to managing remote teams and Agile transformations, Flow is your one-stop shop for success. 

Features:

• Easy-to-manage configurations that align metric-tracking with workflows

• Team-level ticket filters, Git tags, and other lightweight signals that streamline pulling data from different sources

• Drill down features that identify the root cause of workflow problems

• Improved data sharing and collaboration with centralized insights and data visualization tools

LinearB helps project managers measure Git data and meet business goals. Like many platforms, it focuses on boosting efficiency. LinearB tracks DORA metrics and collects data from other tools to give a holistic view of your performance. This focus on visibility prevents bottlenecks and refines workflow processes. 

LinearB breaks different tasks into unique categories, so whether you want to track individual or team progress, you can refine your reports. Pair this with its real-time tracking, and managers can easily plan ahead and track their progress toward goals. The platform can also point out automatable tasks to save time.

Features:

• Goal-setting features that scale based on team efficiency 

• Project delivery forecasting to stay on schedule

• Real-time data on team performance and capacity

• Metrics tracking engineering performance and organizational health

Haystack tracks time series data analytics on open-source projects and events across the software development lifecycle. The platform also reviews code quality metrics to track bugs, daily commits, and overall velocity.

As Haystack tracks data, managers can set up controls and automated alerts when issues arise. The platform also analyzes events over time to detect patterns and set up faster responses to problems. As a result, managers get streamlined information to help them solve problems.

Features:

• Automated and manual alerts you can share across teams

• Risk tracking that highlights precautions before delivery

• Automated milestone tracking and release reporting

• Insight visibility for sprint reviews and retrospectives

Waydev takes its name from an Agile technique that measures engineering output throughout development. It does this by increasing visibility, boosting velocity, and aligning engineers around business goals. 

Waydev puts more emphasis on market-based metrics and ROI than many other platforms. The tool assesses market factors to calculate the value of feature additions against the work they require. This resource planning helps managers gauge progress and weigh development costs. 

Features:

• Project cost insights on a wide range of deliverables

• Resource planning assistance to avoid scope creep 

• Automated insights on metrics related to velocity, bug fixes, and productivity

Allstacks helps software teams prioritize tasks and development efforts. The platform’s value stream intelligence tools give insights into performance, market trends, and stakeholder expectations. As a result, developers can reach better project outcomes.

The tool compiles this data across projects for its forecasting features. Allstacks highlights risks in advance and gives teams more visibility into them. And by including metric tracking, Allstacks generates in-depth reports. 

Features:

• Automated KPI tracking

• Customizable alerts and risk assessments

• Cost estimation and production forecasting tools

Jellyfish breaks down products by engineering insights and business properties. More specifically, it tracks metrics to align your engineering workflows with sources of business value. It also shows the status of every pull request and commit on your team. This helps frame your engineering work in terms of larger business objectives. 

Jellyfish integrates with popular tools like Google Sheets, Jira, and GitLab. With these integrations, Jellyfish scales with your business and gives a wide array of developer analytics.

Features:

• Business and finance insights you can factor into your development cycle

• Quantitative data and qualitative sentiment to track team performance
• DevOps metrics tracking to improve continuous delivery

SonarQube tracks code quality by reviewing changes over time and the technical debt they incur. That said, developers can create custom rules affecting how SonarQube measures quality across projects. This configuration makes it a popular Git tracking tool. 

SonarQube’s configurations also let you set up safeguards against vulnerabilities. The platform’s static code analysis tool lets engineers set up custom safeguards for each project. It can also keep your codebase clean with continual monitoring. 

Features:

• Enterprise-level reporting on security and software assets

• Shareable code configurations on code health

• Program feedback generation throughout development

Code Climate Velocity compiles reports and real-time data for a top-down vantage of your operations. The platform gives visibility into your coding practices and security risks. By refining your workflows, the tool helps set concrete goals around new opportunities and security risks. Finally, it tracks issues in real time to help you quickly move through existing workflows. 

Features:

• Insights on bottlenecks, goal progression, and project value

• Scalable, role-based visibility on an enterprise scale

• Automated, secure integrations with other platforms engineers use

Typo works to maximize the business value of every software delivery. The platform offers out-of-the-box SDLC visibility, developer insights, and workflow automation to build better programs faster. By aligning your output with business goals, Typo helps make the most out of your time investment. The platform also tracks developer well-being to improve retention and the developer experience. 

Features:

• Effort and cost measurements to gauge engineering impact

• Real-time pipeline and delivery updates

• Automated dev workflows for ship pull requests and code reviews

If you still aren’t sure about getting a software development analytics tool, consider these benefits: 

• Improved software: Analytics platforms find errors and assess code quality. By making refinements early, analytics tools deliver better software faster. 

• Streamlined delivery: Fixing bottlenecks and improving processes shortens delivery times. By carrying these insights across projects, your teams will gradually improve turnaround times. 

• Lower costs: Automations packaged with analytics tools cut costs and let teams focus on high-value tasks. The platforms’ metrics also inform decisions about your staging needs and overhead. As a result, you get the most value from your investments. 

• Improved collaboration: Dashboards and reports give visibility into teams' work. These reports help managers coordinate tasks and increase transparency. 
• Automated reporting: Analytics tools automate reporting and generate reports at custom intervals. By compiling this data automatically, managers can focus on minute-to-minute leadership.

With all the options available, finding the right platform can take time. Follow these five steps to find the right software engineering analytics platform for your team. 

The right analytics tool depends on your role and needs. While a web developer and security team may use the same tools, they work to different ends. So, pick a platform that reflects the needs of those who will use the tool. If members of multiple teams will share the same tool, prioritize the ones with the most high-value feature coverage.

You want to pick a platform that aligns with your overall business objectives. Go beyond team goals here and look at your organization’s main priorities. Aligning your choice with these goals ensures that teams using the tool will get the most out of it. To align business goals and your analytics tool’s strategic planning, ask yourself a few questions like:

• What do you need to measure to meet your objectives?

• How will you use your analytics data?

• Which metrics play the biggest role in measuring success?

• Do any platforms focus on business processes related to my goal?

Prices of these tools vary based on the services, configurations, and features they offer. As a result, you could pay thousands of dollars a month to keep the platform running. As with all investments, don’t look at the price tag in a vacuum. Consider what the platform offers against the business value it generates.  With this in mind, a cheaper platform isn’t always a better one. 

Software analytics platforms should integrate with your tech stack. You'll get more robust functions by combining platforms and insights. Even integrating tools with similar functionality can enhance the results you get from both. Combining tools also gives greater visibility into a broader range of metrics, improving KPI and performance tracking. 

Software development analytics tools can integrate with:

• Project management systems

• Bug tracking tools

• Code quality and coverage testing platforms

• Security tools

• Compliance monitoring platforms

If you can’t make a final decision, put your top platforms to the test. Product demos give the best impression of how your tool will work for your needs. After demoing tools, remember to ask sales reps any last questions before making the purchase. Additionally, going over customer reviews can sway your final decision for the better.

From DevOps monitoring to risk management, software development analytics tools help track your team’s progress. Every project poses unique challenges, but the right tool can always give you a leg up. So, whether you want to boost ROI, improve your code, or get more visibility, an analytics tool can help.

To get the best analytics, try Pluralsight Flow. Flow offers the most valuable insights in one easy-to-read dashboard. From there, our tool can support collaboration, improve workflows, and generate reports that cut down on wasted effort. Schedule a demo to optimize your team’s performance today.