Video: 10 Minute IT Jams - Who is LinearB?

A new era is dawning for software development teams. Linear B, a software delivery intelligence company, is making waves with its focus on helping engineering teams deliver code smarter and faster.

Dan Lyons, co-founder of Linear B, joined us for a 10-minute interview to shed light on how the company is transforming the way businesses approach software engineering. Linear B centres its efforts on providing valuable insights and data-driven solutions to address what can often be a messy, complex process in software delivery.

"At Linear B, we're enabling VPs of engineering or CTOs to actually start their engineering metrics programme," Lyons explained. His company's main goal is to bring visibility to teams, offering key data on vital elements such as cycle time, deployment frequency, and resource allocation. "For example, VPs of engineering that want to get insight into cycle time or deployment frequency and resource allocation, they can come to Linear B - all SaaS-based - and get that instant visibility," he said.

Making Metrics Accessible and Adopted

Lyons went on to reveal the company's two-pronged approach. Not only does Linear B equip technology leaders with the ability to view and analyse engineering metrics, but it also focuses on ensuring team leaders and developers embrace and adopt these tools in their daily workflow.

"The other thing that's really important when you're starting your metrics programme is to ensure adoption for team leaders and developers as well," Lyons said. To address this, Linear B offers features aimed at daily standups, retrospectives, and defining workflow policy - all to fit the needs of those at the coalface of software production.

He added: "We have a lot of great functionality to help with daily standups, retrospectives, and kind of defining your workflow policy as a team leader of how you want your team to deliver software."

A Global Customer Base, with Developers at Heart

Linear B's reach is already significant, despite being a relatively new entrant. "We actually have customers all over the world. We've got about a thousand to 1,500 teams using Linear B right now," Lyons said.

Their sweet spot, it seems, is serving development teams in businesses where speedy iteration and the swift delivery of new value to customers is critical. "The businesses that are really reliant on generating a great product and iterating quickly, getting new value into the hands of customers - those are usually the teams that get the most value out of Linear B," he said.

Forging Powerful Partnerships

Recently, Linear B announced a partnership with project management tool Clubhouse, and Lyons pointed out that this collaboration grew directly from their customer base's requests. "It came out of our customers themselves," he explained. "We found that Linear B and Clubhouse.io have a joint customer base that was asking us to do an integration together."

The new partnership is, at its core, a technology integration that allows Linear B to pull project-related information from Clubhouse and bring it into its own platform. The practical result? "Those metrics that I mentioned in the beginning, like cycle time or deployment frequency, or if you're in an iteration and you have a branch or PR that is stuck, we can now associate that back to a story, or an actual bug or a chore within Clubhouse. That gives greater context for team leaders and developers to make decisions," he said.

Remote Work and Asynchronous Development

As COVID-19 and its aftershocks have altered working habits worldwide, Lyons sees a fundamental shift in how development teams operate. "We're 100% focused on engineering organisations," he emphasised. "With the situation that's been happening in the world over the last year, year and a half, what we're finding is a lot of developers are working remotely now, or you might have that hybrid situation where some of the development team is in-house or in-office, some of them are working from home."

This dispersed way of working has made asynchronous development the new norm. Lyons said: "That's the way that teams want to work now. Developers want to work from home any time of day - night-time, morning, doesn't matter - and they might be working with a team that's overseas."

This trend has directly influenced Linear B's development focus. "What Linear B actually offers within asynchronous development, in order to do that effectively, everyone has to have the same visibility," Lyons explained. "From a git-based perspective - what pull requests are waiting to be reviewed, which bug is waiting to be released, are we stuck, do we have the right context in real time? Because that's the way that you can actually make asynchronous development effective."

Product Roadmap and New Features

Asked what trends were shaping Linear B's ongoing product development, Lyons shared a glimpse into the future.

"Now that for the VPs and the CTOs getting those top-line metrics - where we're really focused right now is ensuring that we're providing amazing value for team leaders and developers," he said.

One key feature involves automatic project status updates, integrated directly with developers' normal workflow. "All you have to do is your normal coding work; the ticket updates automatically," he explained. The company is also prioritising integrations with popular workplace chat platforms. "We're really focused on... Slack commands for developers, so the developers don't have to log into the Linear B platform. They can stay where they are in Slack, do a Linear B Slack command, and get information." This includes updates about code reviews or pull requests needing attention, ensuring that developers spend less time managing tasks and more time building solutions.

Easy Access for New Users

For enterprises and users interested in exploring what Linear B has on offer, Lyons made it clear the barrier to entry is low. "We actually have a free product offering that literally you can get up and running with Linear B in three minutes or less," he said.

As the world of software engineering continues to adapt to remote and hybrid realities, Linear B appears well-positioned to help teams stay efficient, collaborative, and focused. Lyons summarised their mission succinctly: "We're really focused on those team leaders and developers right now."