The Secret to Developer Productivity Isn’t Coding Faster.
Ask any engineer where they lose the most time, and you won’t hear "writing code." The real bottlenecks happen between the code—in code reviews, debugging cycles, context-switching, and repetitive admin work.
The best developers aren’t necessarily faster coders—they’re the ones who’ve figured out how to streamline the messy parts of the engineering workflow. That’s where the right tools come in—not your IDE or Git client, but enhancers that eliminate friction, automate repetitive tasks, and free developers to focus on problem-solving instead of process.
Here are 10 powerful tools (organized by category) that engineering teams use to increase flow, reduce wasted cycles, and help developers stay in the zone. These aren’t just “nice-to-haves”—they’re battle-tested tools that will make your team faster, sharper, and more productive. We’ve grouped them into two broad categories. The first are tools you can implement at a team level. The other are tools each team member can use to improve their own productivity.
🚀 Team-Level Productivity Tools
Team-level productivity isn’t about getting individual developers to work harder—it’s about removing the bottlenecks that slow down everyone.
🧑💻 Code Review & Collaboration
Code reviews are essential—but they can also be the biggest productivity killer. Long, stagnant pull requests (PRs) slow down releases, frustrate developers, and cause code rot. The following tools tighten the feedback loop and speed up code reviews without sacrificing quality.
1. 🛠️ LinearB gitStream (GitHub integration) – Cut Review Time by 40%
Stop wasting time wondering which PR to review.
Code review bottlenecks are real. Your team has a stack of pull requests waiting, but nobody knows which ones to tackle first. Enter gitStream—a GitHub integration that automates PR triage by analyzing size, complexity, and status. It surfaces the most actionable PRs and assigns estimated review times, allowing developers to prioritize manageable ones first.
Teams using gitStream have cut code review times by up to 40% because developers no longer waste time reviewing complex PRs at the wrong time. It also automates merging based on pre-set rules—ensuring PRs don’t pile up waiting for approvals.
2. 💬 Axolo (Slack–GitHub integration) – Code Reviews Directly in Slack
You’ve opened a PR. Now you wait… and wait. Axolo solves this by spinning up a dedicated Slack channel for each PR, automatically inviting relevant reviewers and posting CI updates in real-time.
Developers can discuss, comment, and approve directly within Slack—cutting down the back-and-forth and reducing PR merge time from 2.4 days to 1.5 days on average. No more stale PRs stuck in limbo
3. 🤖 Mergify (GitHub integration) – Merge Faster, Ship More
No more ‘merge conflicts’ anxiety.
Waiting on a CI check to pass before merging? Mergify automates it. This GitHub add-on allows you to define merge rules (e.g., tests must pass, approvals required) and automatically merges once those criteria are met.
It creates merge queues, ensuring PRs are tested against the latest version of the codebase—maintaining code integrity even with multiple parallel merges. Teams using Mergify deploy more frequently with fewer conflicts.
4. 🔔 Pull Request Reminders (GitHub → Slack) – Nudge the Team, Get It Done
"Automated nudges = faster reviews."
Developers hate nagging, but reviews can’t wait. Pull Request Reminders sends scheduled Slack updates listing pending PRs and highlighting stale reviews. This consistent nudge keeps PRs moving without relying on human follow-ups.
📈 Project Management & Process Automation
The best engineering teams aren’t just fast—they're organized. These tools tighten the link between code and planning, removing manual work and creating real-time visibility into progress.
1. ⚙️ Jira Automation – Automate the Boring Stuff
Jira is powerful—but only if it’s used the right way. Jira Automation removes the human element from routine admin tasks. It can automatically:
✔️ Link PRs to Jira tickets
✔️ Close issues when code deploys
✔️ Transition tickets between states when PRs are opened/closed
No more manually updating Jira statuses or tracking down missing tickets. Atlassian reports that teams using Jira Automation see reduced human error and faster issue resolution.
2. ⚔️ Rally – Dedicated Chat for Work Items (Perfect for Distributed Teams)
Rally keeps the conversation where the work is happening—so nothing falls through the cracks.
One of the biggest challenges for distributed teams is fragmented communication. Work happens in one place (Jira), but the conversation about that work happens somewhere else (Slack, Teams, or email). This constant context-switching slows teams down and causes misunderstandings.
Rally is aJira plugin that makes it easy for teams to collaborate around their Jira work items. One of the ways it solves the problem of fragmented communication is by giving you a dedicated chat spaces that is tied directly into Jira work items. Each task you create in Jira in Rally automatically gets its own chat thread—so discussions stay linked to the actual work. No more digging through Slack to find the conversation about a specific bug fix or feature update.
- How It Works:
✅ When you create a Jira work item (e.g., a bug report or feature task) you can create a Rally session. It gives you a chat thread that is automatically attached to your Jira work item
✅ Team members can discuss the work, ask questions, and post updates directly in the thread—without switching platforms.
✅ Conversations remain attached to the work item, so even if someone joins the project later, they can see the full history and context without searching multiple tools. - Why It Works for Distributed Teams:
🌍 Rally is especially effective for distributed teams because it eliminates the need to jump between Slack and your project management tool.
🌍 Remote teams often struggle with siloed communication; Rally centralizes everything, ensuring that no one misses a critical update because they weren’t in the right Slack channel.
🌍 Discussions remain organized and searchable within the context of the work itself, not scattered across messaging platforms.
3. ⚙️ Engineering Analytics Tools (LinearB, Swarmia, Jellyfish)
Being productive isn’t just about moving fast—it’s about knowing where to focus.
Developers aren’t always the problem. Sometimes the workflow itself is broken: too much work-in-progress, slow PR pickup, or constant rework. That’s where engineering analytics tools come in—they help identify bottlenecks, surface data-driven insights, and enable teams to course-correct in real time. But not all tools are created equal—LinearB, Swarmia, and Jellyfish each have their own strengths.
- 🚀 LinearB – Best for Streamlining Development Workflows. LinearB is a Software Engineering Intelligence (SEI) platform that helps engineering leaders improve their team's operational efficiency. It's best for teams that want to improve their development pipeline and increase velocity. It focuses on providing actionable insights and automating processes to remove bottlenecks. LinearB helps development teams identify and resolve bottlenecks, enabling them to ship code faster and more efficiently by providing actionable insights and automation.
- 📊 Swarmia – Best for Aligning Teams and Improving Developer Experience. Swarmia is an agile metrics tool that helps engineering organizations diagnose and track productivity within their companies. Swarmia takes a holistic approach, focusing on both team alignment and developer experience. It aims to connect engineering activities with business objectives while promoting a healthy and productive work environment
- 💼 Jellyfish – Best for Strategic Engineering Leadership. Jellyfish excels at providing strategic insights to engineering leaders, connecting engineering efforts with business outcomes. It enables data-driven decision-making at the executive level and promotes alignment across the organization
📚 Documentation & Knowledge Sharing
Bad documentation is like having no documentation at all.
1. 📖 Guru – Verified Knowledge in Slack
The answer is already in Slack.
Guru integrates with Slack to provide real-time, verified answers. If a developer asks how to configure an API, Guru pulls up the latest doc—without leaving Slack.
It also prompts subject matter experts to update outdated documentation automatically, keeping everything fresh.
2. 💡 Stack Overflow for Teams – Don’t Answer the Same Question Twice
Turn team knowledge into a searchable database
Internal knowledge dies if it’s not documented. Stack Overflow for Teams lets your company create a private Q&A database where developers can search for answers to company-specific issues.
Teams report reduced onboarding time and fewer interruptions because developers can self-serve solutions.
🛠️ Testing & Debugging Accelerators
Slow debugging cycles are silent productivity killers.
1. 🔍 Sentry – Catch Errors Before They Hit Production
Fix it before the customer notices.
Sentry hooks into your code and catches errors in real time, providing detailed stack traces and user context. It automatically groups similar errors and assigns them to the right developer—turning chaos into actionable fixes.
2. 💥 BuildPulse – Stop Fighting Flaky Tests
Flaky tests = developer frustration.
BuildPulse identifies and quarantines flaky tests, reducing the noise in CI pipelines. Teams that implement BuildPulse see higher developer confidence in test results—and fewer wasted cycles rerunning tests.
👨💻 Individual Developer Productivity Tools
The best teams are made up of productive individuals.
1. ✅ To-Do Integrations – Keep Track of the Small Stuff
Todoist for VS Code lets you create and check off tasks directly from your editor. No need to switch tools—your task list stays where you work.
2. 🕑 WakaTime – Track Your Coding Time
See how much time you actually spend coding (vs. being stuck in meetings). Developers who track coding time report higher focus and better work-life balance.
3. 🧠 Raycast – Fastest Way to Do Anything
Raycast is like Spotlight for developers. Quickly switch projects, open files, or launch apps—all from a keyboard shortcut.
Conclusion
Stop Wasting Time—Start Shipping Faster.
The best developers aren’t better at coding—they’re better at managing the process of coding. The tools above remove friction from the development cycle so your team can focus on building.