COVID-19 effect on analytics software development

** Like so many organizations throughout the world, the central offices of many BI vendors -- many of them in California, where there's a mandatory stay-at-home order -- are ghost towns as almost all employees work remotely.

   **If software engineers are allowed to return to offices in a matter of weeks, it stands to reason that analytics software development won't be affected much. But if COVID-19 forces people to work from home for months, at the very least analytics software development will have to be done differently.

**No longer will software engineering teams be able to collaborate in person. Problems that might be solved with a simple question asked over a cubicle wall might go unsolved because now it takes a phone call, text or virtual meeting to ask that question, and that seemingly minor barrier might subconsciously prevent the question from ever being asked.

    ***A new collaboration

**Many vendors maintain offices throughout the world in addition to their headquarters.

**ThoughtSpot is based in Sunnyvale, Calif., but has offices in Bangalore, India, Tokyo, London and Seattle. Qlik was founded in Sweden, is based in King of Prussia, Penn., and operates offices in seven other U.S. locations. Sisense is based in New York City, with offices in San Francisco, Melbourne and Tokyo, among other places.

**They're all seemingly set up to operate seamlessly, even under the unique circumstances created by COVID-19.

**But with just about everyone now working from different locations, there isn't that opportunity to brainstorm over a cup of coffee. Instead of hindering communication, however, Sisense CEO Amir Orad said he thinks working from home will lead to more widespread collaboration.

**"Necessity is the mother of all innovation," he said. "Working from home, we have more Slack activity today at Sisense than ever before. We have 15 offices, and until now the people in the main offices had an answer advantage -- the water cooler. Everyone else was screwed because they weren't at the water cooler. They missed the … hive mind. But now everyone is on the same page."

**Meanwhile, according to analysts, the new reality, which currently includes stay-at-home orders in more than 20 states in addition to entire countries like Italy and Great Britain, could create circumstances that actually improve the ability of software engineers to innovate.

**"I have heard anecdotally that some teams feel more productive," said Donald Farmer, founder and principal at TreeHive Strategy. "There are fewer endless, unproductive meetings and there's more real development/design time. For sure, there's not so much corridor chat, but it's difficult to quantify that value. So, [there might be] a longer-term dip in creativity, but a short-term increase in productivity. It could be fascinating."