“We used to think our code was simple”
The Director of Engineering at one of the Big 4 consulting firms faced a problem: their team was tasked with building complex, technical products, yet they never documented their code. Leading to long onboarding times for new developers and forced developers to revisit and relearn areas of code they had worked on in the past.
“Devs would work on a project and then move away from it for a few months, but when they would come back to it, all of that original knowledge was lost and they had to relearn the codebase and all of the particularities within it.”
Director of Engineering
Cutting implementation time in half
The introduction of Swimm completely changed the way developers interacted with the codebase. By using Swimm Playlists, an organized sets of documents within repositories, developers gained a quicker and more comprehensive understanding of specific codebase areas. Additionally, Swimm’s IDE plugin significantly enhanced this experience, integrating seamlessly into the developers’ work environment, alerting them to relevant documentation for different code sections.
This was particularly useful for tasks such as implementing endpoints for a suite of microservices. With Swimm, developers accessed necessary code knowledge more easily, leading to more efficient task completion and reduced sprint points usage. Before Swimm, a task of this nature would typically be estimated to take around 15 days for a new joiner to the team to be independently effective. With Swimm, the required time was cut in half.
“Being able to get documentation as close to the code as possible helped us tremendously. In my experience, with tools like Confluence, nobody can find anything. Not to mention, those docs get outdated the second they’re written.”
Director of Engineering
From 30 minutes to 5 minutes
Before Swimm, over 50% of the team spent 15-30 minutes seeking answers in existing documentation, with some even exceeding an hour, whenever they had a question about the code. After implementing Swimm, half of the team reported that their search time dropped to under 5 minutes. This significant reduction in search time freed up resources for other critical projects and initiatives.
“Swimm isn’t just a documentation tool; it’s a game-changer in the development process. It’s rare to find such impactful solutions that address the core obstacles in development and documentation. Swimm is one of those rare unicorns that delivers what it promises.”
Director of Engineering
Finally: a culture of knowledge sharing
The integration of Swimm at the consulting firm did more than just streamline processes; it fundamentally changed the team’s culture around sharing knowledge about their code base. Traditionally viewed as a tedious, often neglected aspect of software development, documentation with Swimm became a vital, engaging part of the team’s daily workflow.
“The whole attitude towards documentation literally changed within the space of a week, which I thought was brilliant. People were actually excited to document, which is completely unheard of.”
Director of Engineering
