Software Engineers' Time Allocation
Software engineers probably spend less than 10% of their time writing code. The other 90% of their time is involved with other activities that are more important than writing code.
These activities include:
- Eliciting Requirements
- Analyzing Requirements
- Writing Software Requirements Documents
- Building and Analyzing Prototypes
- Developing Software Designs
- Writing Software Design Documents
- Researching Software Engineering Techniques or obtaining information about the application domain
- Developing Test Strategies and Test Cases
- Testing the Software and recording the results
- Isolating Problems and Solving Them
- Learning to Use or installing and configuring new software and hardware tools
- Writing Documentation such as users manuals
- Attending Meetings with colleagues, customers, and supervisors
- Archiving Software or readying it for distribution