By Darryl K. Taft
The concept of remote-first application development is part of what makes developers the “digital first responders” of enterprise IT because that mindset enables developers to build and ship code faster, from anywhere.
However, “To me this is just another buzzword,” said Holger Mueller, an analyst at Constellation Research in Monte Vista, Calif. “Unless there is some SDLC [software development lifecycle] support specifically tuned to remote and distributed teams, this is not special. I don’t know a developer who has not worked from home — even if only at night or weekends — so this is not really something new.”
But Microsoft insists that remote-first development changes the nature of collaboration.
For example, “Switching to digital sticky notes is part of the story, but the way development teams and other knowledge workers are using collaboration tools has expanded and deepened, changing the way people work,” said Jason Bloomberg, an analyst at Intellyx in Suffolk, Va. “From Microsoft’s perspective, this story is about Teams, GitHub and their numerous development tools — but of course, remote-first usually involves a mix of different tools from different vendors.”
