Tech businesses are increasingly focussing on training their software engineers and cloud architects for developing custom digital software and products, instead of depending on third-party vendors. That’s a huge shift for most businesses and the ongoing dearth of skilled cloud workers is making this transition even more arduous. Of the 90% of IT leaders who plan to expand their modern software engineering and cloud environments, 80% say that the lack of employee skills is holding them back. Deloitte has released a perspective on six ways how IT leaders can tackle the growing software engineering skills shortage. Here is the summary of the piece.
- Bridging the gap between academia and corporates: It is unlikely that the colleges and universities can meet urgent technology training needs anytime soon as 95% of the university technology curriculum takes years to develop or change. Higher education cannot keep up with the growing tech innovations and hence, stronger partnerships between universities, businesses, and cloud providers will help develop up-to-date learning that combines deep technical training with a singular business strategy.
- Upskilling existing employees and training new hires at the front end: Upskilling and reskilling existing employees can help them update their knowledge. Not only this, but businesses must also provide in-depth training for new hires before they start their jobs. The combination of skills-based and simulation training enables employees to apply that learning to real-world use cases and challenging problems, thereby addressing the problem of skills shortage to a great extent.
- Creating more builders: Software engineers not only focus on application maintenance and support but have also become critical resources for driving business innovation and outcomes. Giving them autonomy with minimal guardrails and a few absolute rules, allows them to experiment with new technology choices, architectural decisions, and more innovative ways of solving business and technology problems. Companies can encourage developers to get creative with the code.
- Design curriculum around personas: Ditch the traditional siloed learning methods that are vertically focused on a particular group or function instead of the entire organization. Companies can adopt a forward-thinking cloud workforce curriculum that is designed around roles and personas and that cuts across the organization. To address the skills shortage, IT leaders need to understand the critical personas needed across the verticals of your organization. Identify key roles and personas that are critical and common to building a culture of software engineering. Sharing the training curriculum across related roles and groups provides an enterprise-wide consistency in skills and knowledge.
- Just cloud certification is not enough: Curated e-learning, vendor-led bootcamps, cloud certification workshops, and experiential hands-on practicums must be included in a cloud learning curriculum. Each professional must have the full set of skills to do the work required and be deployment-ready. Even though cloud certification is an important credential, training should go beyond specific cloud service provider skills and include new ways of working, along with fostering engineering-led thinking and culture across the enterprise.
- A mindset shift: The emphasis on cloud education will represent a huge shift in thinking. It will demand a culture of experimentation where smaller teams are rewarded for creative coding without being penalized for failure. Code will be a creative path toward open-ended problem-solving. This new approach to learning should include instruction on modern delivery processes and tools like DevOps, agile methodology, and design thinking. These tools can together enable developers to deliver iterative, agile experimentation that enhances individual creativity. Organizations must recognize the employees attaining such skills and can urge them to promote their achievements using meaningful internal credentials.
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