Code review is a key step in the software development process – people check a program by looking at and reading parts of the source code. But despite its importance, not all developers are happy with the way traditional code reviews work.For example, Microsoft study It was found that the results of code reviews often did not match the motivation, whether due to unrealistic expectations or insufficient developer resources.
To change code review for the better, Jaime Jorge co-founded Codacy, which provides information on code quality, security, compliance, and performance. Lisbon-based Codacy, which just launched a new product designed to measure engineering performance metrics, has closed a $15 million Series B round led by Bright Pixel Capital, the corporate venture capital firm of Sonae Group, one of Portugal’s largest employers .
Codacy has raised $28 million to date.
“To remain competitive in a world where every company is dominated by software, companies need to strike a balance between quality and speed of delivery,” Jorge told TechCrunch in an email interview. “The industry’s adoption of remote work has thrown companies into disarray, creating tensions between engineers who make money for flexibility and freedom and managers who are accountable for results. Many companies mistakenly see monitoring as the solution, which can worsen in the long run culture and preventing them from hiring and retaining the best talent possible.”
Jorge completed a master’s thesis focused on identifying duplicate code, which piqued his interest in the code review business. He launched the startup in 2012 in partnership with João Caxaria, another co-founder of Codacy.
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The code review market has grown significantly since Codacy was founded a decade ago, with companies like SonarSource and DeepCode (whose platforms scan code repositories for bugs) raising hundreds of millions of dollars in venture capital. Incumbents like Amazon have followed suit (see: CodeGuru).
But Jorge sees the scale of the Codacy platform as a sign of its success. Over the past 12 months, the platform has discovered more than 20 million vulnerabilities, and Jorge claims that the platform has reduced the time developers spend on quality reviews by 60 percent.
We have to take his word for it – stats like these are hard to independently confirm.but what Yes Verifiably, Codacy sees strong business opportunities in engineering performance monitoring beyond code reviews. That’s the focus of the company’s second product, Pulse, which is designed to measure software deployment frequency, lead time for code changes, and other aspects of software development related to “business impact.”
“The metrics collected by Pulse allow teams to understand performance without compromising a healthy culture,” Jorge said. “We’ve seen first-hand how difficult it is for our clients to maintain a culture of healthy performance while working remotely. Pulse is designed to help with that process.”
Of course, not every developer will accept the idea of keeping an eye on their work. On the other hand, it may not matter whether managers consider quantifying, or at least attempt to quantify, individual contributions to the project.
Jorge said Codacy “periodically” deletes customer data, including performance indicators, which “no longer need to be maintained” [the company’s] product[s]. “
“Over time, we’ve found that…leaders tend to focus on metrics that are closer to larger business outcomes. In other words, leaders care about forests, not trees. That’s why we designed Pulse: to provide a set of Meaningful, cohesive metrics that leadership cares about,” Jorge said, asserting that Pulse is not inherently intrusive. “This way, they can follow what their colleagues in other departments are already doing by measuring performance without compromising their engineering culture.”
Codacy seems to be doing it right, with a customer base of about 870 brands, including Panasonic and Delivery Hero, and a user base of over 300,000 developers. Jorge said the funding will be used primarily for product development, including adding new features to Codacy’s existing services, bringing new services to market, and recruiting senior talent across the company’s engineering, support and success teams, as well as sales and marketing teams . (Today, Codacy has 100 employees.)
“The broad slowdown in technology has proven to be beneficial to us as companies look to automate processes and understand their engineering performance while maintaining quality. Despite the high frequency of layoffs in the industry, we have seen many of our customers actually expand the use of our product suite,” Jorge continued. “We are very bullish on the timeless, dependent nature of software development. It is not cycle dependent and its dynamics are built on the foundations of global digital transformation. Now is the time to be greedy because every company wants to be software-led.”
