Tackling the software skills crunch

How IT leaders grow their software engineering resources

Software development is an ever more important part of IT and business, yet some countries face shortages of software skills. As well as making it harder to recruit developers, this is also pushing up salaries. Many possible solutions have been explored, often aiming to leverage other countries where there’s a surplus – or at least an adequate supply – of developers and where costs are lower. They include outsourcing, hiring developers from abroad, finding a partner to help build an offshore team, and perhaps the most complex option, setting up subsidiaries in those countries.

Each of these has its advantages and disadvantages for what we’ll call the ‘parent’ organisation, of course. Against this background, the research presented in this report, based on feedback from 50 IT leaders and managers, considers how resourcing ideas and staffing solutions in this space are evolving. If you too face, or expect to face, resource challenges in software engineering, then read on to learn more.

KEY RESEARCH FINDINGS

We surveyed IT leaders and managers whose organisations’ business relies to some extent on custom software engineering and development.
Behaviours and expectations can differ significantly depending on the size of the software team, with sizes in our survey ranging from 1-10 to 500-plus.
Almost every team now has many of its developers working from home at least part of the time, with only one respondent saying that it never happens in their team.
The skills crunch is real, with most teams reporting both shortages and difficulties in recruiting additional skilled staff. This may add cost, in higher salaries and greater use of expensive contract resources, or leave worrisome gaps.
While the in-house model still dominates, with software developers as full-time staff, many organisations also use or are growing their use of remote/offshore development resources, whether via offshore staff, outsourcing, or another model.
Organisations looking to augment their existing software development resources with remote/offshore talent face many challenges. In particular, it is vital to operationally and culturally integrate the remote team with their ‘onshore’ peers.
The awareness of services that can short-cut this process is patchy, with outdated assumptions (such as offshoring=contracting/outsourcing) often being embedded.

Download the Research Report to read more…

Bryan Betts

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Bryan is a technology enthusiast and industry veteran. He has been analysing, explaining and writing about IT and business in a highly engaging manner for around three decades. His experience spans the early days of minicomputers and PC technology, through the emergence of cellular data and smart mobile devices, to the latest developments of the software-defined age in which we all live today. Over his career, Bryan has seen at first-hand how IT changes the world – and how the world changes IT – and he brings that extensive insight to his role as an industry analyst.