Just recently an eye-opening post about time wasted with WAS and RAD got some traction on TSS forums, while also fueling more comments to the blog that sparked the thread.

Great tools can be greatly misused. Can we verify this assertion when it comes to WebSphere? Is WebSphere being misused?

A brand new productivity report includes some data that might be interesting for application server users, and it includes some data for IBM WebSphere usage as well. 

IBM WAS users, 66 respondents, have reported that on average 23% of every coding hour is spent on server restarts: 69 minutes a day. Note that for this survey, it was assumed that developers spend an average of 5 hours a day coding and 3 hours a day involved in other tasks.

If we proceed with the calculations based on the figures above, we get 345 minutes a week, and 276 hours a year lost for tedious server restarts. Assuming that the average developer gets 4 weeks of vacation, then this is already higher than 10 work-weeks of five-hour coding days lost.

Obviously, it would be really great to get more data from IBM WAS users, as 66 is obviously not a huge survey population. If you’re an IBM WAS user and willing to contribute some data, fill in the survey to compare your experience!