During the pandemic, the rules of software development were rewritten. As organizations pivoted to new digital business models and offerings, development teams faced continued pressure to quickly deliver new digital capabilities and create more dynamic and anticipatory experiences for customers than ever before. For the most part, developers rose to the challenge, but those higher expectations will persist into the year ahead — and likely well beyond it.

So, how will developers meet these rising expectations in 2022? We predict that software development will look toward event-driven architectures (EDAs), consolidated DevOps pipelines, and AI bots to continue delivering on the needs of the business.

Here’s a detailed look at three of our 2022 software development predictions:

  • At least one-third of enterprises will focus on EDA in 2022. The growth of distributed application architecture hits a wall when only using synchronous APIs for integration due to fragility and scalability limitations. Over the years, EDA has gained more interest as it addresses this wall through APIs, microservices, and integration. We predict that in 2022, that interest will expand, with 35% of enterprises putting a major focus on EDA.
  • Half of enterprise development teams will shift to consolidated DevOps toolchains. While best-in-breed tools will continue to exist, more and more developers (and the enterprises that support them) are showing a preference for holistic toolchains. There are several reasons developers prefer them: to enable automated governance and compliance, to enable further adoption of GitOps, and to utilize value stream management tools. In 2022, we predict that 50% of enterprises will rely on these toolchains, which will essentially become another platform as a service.
  • Nearly all development tools will include an AI bot by the end of 2022. 2021 was the dawn of a new developer era focused on the use of AI, with a controlled trial of GitHub Copilot, IBM AI for Code and AI stack, and Oracle releasing a query language generator. This follows the longer-term goal of using AI in continuous testing. In 2022, we expect to see AI bots in nearly all development tools, adding natural language and other capabilities to the developer’s toolbox.

Higher expectations. New processes. New tools. 2022 looks to be the start of a new normal in software development. Learn more about what trends will impact developers in our full 2022 Predictions: Software Development report for clients.