Tag: Software Development Staffing Strategy

You’ve just gotten the go-ahead to move on a potentially lucrative new project. However, as a hiring manager, you’re in a challenging position. You’re tasked with assembling one of the best software development teams your company has ever seen. And they need to be productive right out of the gate! It’s an assignment that has you wondering: what makes one team successful and efficient, while another team struggles to get the job done?

Within three years, there will be a million more computing jobs than eligible applicants, according to Code.org estimates. This means top software developers and engineers will continue to be in high demand. They’ll be awash in opportunities and offers, and can take their pick. This causes hiring managers to try and find new ways to get their attention. How can they hire top software engineers on a startup budget? How can they find them on any budget? Companies, regardless of size, have P&L considerations. So how can you land enterprise talent in a competitive market while ensuring you get the best possible value?

With an estimated 20 million software developers worldwide (as of 2017) and over 250 programming languages and countless specialties, it’s easy to see how difficult it could be for a hiring manager to find the right person for the job.

A recent meeting with your software development team leaders left you feeling a bit discouraged. You learned that while you have some very talented developers, most of these individuals are specialists. Specialists tend to have a very narrow range of expertise. For you, this scenario results in low skill redundancy and skill gaps that create major challenges for your team. Now, your team leaders are struggling to coordinate expertise, and the few individuals who are more versatile are getting overworked.

The rapid growth of the tech industry has made recruiting and hiring software developers increasingly difficult. For every one developer who’s available to work, there are five open positions. There are also dozens of unique programming languages and tech specialties to consider. Evaluating a software developer’s skill set and talents can be a real challenge. The popularity of agile development has made the practice far more collaborative than it was in the past. Collaborativity has benefits, but is also makes it a bit less likely that a developer can take true ownership of a project. So projects listed on developer resumes may not be accurately representative of their talents. Plus, the fast-evolving nature of this field means that work samples are of limited use. Standards change dramatically and quickly. This represents an added layer of complexity for talent acquisition.

How does staff augmentation compare to managed services, and how do these staffing models impact your tech and software development projects?

It took a while, but finally, you’ve developed a software development dream team. You have great interpersonal dynamics and your group is well-balanced in terms of skills and abilities. But then, in a twist of fate, came the car accident that left one colleague out of work for six weeks. And next week, another colleague departs for two weeks to tend to her sick child. In short, your once-perfect tech team now has some major holes and you’re in a position where you’re at serious risk of seeing some major timeline overruns.