In a recent whitepaper, we talked about some of the advantages remote work can hold for both employers and their employees. Now, the crisis caused by the COVID-19 virus means that remote work has gone from a nice-to-have luxury to a non-negotiable necessity. While some roles are obviously more compatible for telework than others, the right systems and software can help any organization maintain productivity through the pandemic.
On the mainframe, remote work obstacles abound. Despite the fact that coding standards are quite common, enforcing them often proves difficult, and inefficient SQL statements can compromise application quality and performance. In addition, global teams responsible for mainframe development often run into versioning issues when working on the same module.
Insoft Infotel created the DB/IQ Quality Assurance (QA) tool to help keep large, global development teams functioning as a cohesive unit. QA works to enforce application quality by automatically scanning SQL statements and flagging those that fail to meet standards. Those standards could be one of more than 350 we’ve baked into the software itself, or they could be custom rules set up by users after installation. Instead of simply flagging statements for review, QA gives developers details on why the code was flagged including alternatives to bring the code back into compliance, and includes the cost of not doing so.
QA also gives organizations the ability to monitor code quality over time. If a team hires new developers, for example, QA will track the number of defective or non-compliant statements to offer an overall indication of quality trends. If 10,000 scans in January yield 4,000 defects, but the same number of scans in February only shows 2,500, code quality is improving as the new developers get up to speed with your coding standardization initiatives.
The Rise of Remote Work
At this stage, there’s still quite a bit of uncertainty around the COVID-19 crisis, but we do know that it will eventually subside. What’s less certain is how organizations that adopted remote work policies out of necessity will treat the subject when the restrictions imposed by social distancing are a distant memory. Although it’s possible many will call workers back to the office for business as usual, research from social media management company Buffer illustrates that 99% of the pre-pandemic remote workforce wanted to continue working at least partially remote for the remainder of their careers, and that 95% of telecommuters would recommend the arrangement to their peers. In the post-pandemic era, remote work might not be mandatory, but there’s no doubt it will continue to be a major differentiator for the organizations that offer it as an option.
