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Automation through artificial intelligence—and to the extent that low-code/no-code capabilities provide simple drag-and-drop solutions for creating applications—enables more people in more organizations to work on smaller software development tasks.
This gives the core development team more space to focus on more important issues, while also freeing up some resources to outsource complex and specialized technical work to experts. While businesses are still asking how to become faster, leaner and more digital, new questions about how to compete from a capabilities and talent perspective are revealing the skills businesses need.
Popular areas requiring technical specialization
- Machine learning.
- Natural language processing.
- cloud computing.
- Robotic process automation.
- Data Science/Analytics.
- Internet of Things.
- Development and operations.
- Cybersecurity.
Determine the technology you need and seek expertise
Spending on these specialized technologies has been increasing in the United States and Europe as companies look for ways to gain a competitive advantage.
A Deloitte Consulting Report Starting in 2021, companies with clear digital strategies and outstanding IT departments have spent less than half of their budgets on business operations and only 26% on innovation. Within three to five years, these companies plan to continue reducing operating expenses and increase innovation spending to 38%.
The need for specialized technical expertise is increasing among businesses across all industries, not just technology companies. We’re seeing growing interest across the enterprise, not just IT departments.
In today’s era of hyperspecialization, here’s a winning strategy: Identify the technologies that will make you stand out and seek out the best expertise to help you realize your vision.
Supply comparison.Demand for technical skills
I don’t want to overstate this, but you should know that most software development jobs still rely on core, well-understood technologies, but emerging specialty technologies are an important topic in conversations I have with clients every day. Innovation is becoming a priority for IT leaders, and they ask me how to find talent with advanced, hyper-specialized skills in the technologies, platforms, and programming languages that are critical to cutting-edge projects.
The biggest problem right now is the shortage of technical skills needed to develop and maintain these technologies.
The same goes for libraries, web development frameworks, and other specialized fields: commonly used technologies become cheaper and cheaper, while exciting new technologies become more and more expensive as demand grows.
Since high rates are associated with scarcity, even if you have the money to pay for expertise, you may not be able to get on anyone’s schedule right away.According to 2021 Harvey Nash Group Digital Leadership ReportMore than 67% of IT leaders say a lack of professional talent is preventing them from keeping up with digital change and innovation.
The challenge of staying current
Hundreds of thousands of cybersecurity-related positions have gone unfilled in the United States over the past few years, as have other disciplines.
Upskilling in-house teams to take advantage of new technologies is expensive and time-consuming, so for most companies the only practical option is to source outsourced talent to meet demand. This can have the added benefit of allowing companies to pay only for what they need, as in many cases specialist talent is only needed for a short period of time.
Fusing your existing team with some experts can lead to new ideas and better-than-expected results.
For example, you may need a cloud architect to help you migrate on-premises systems and support the design of new cloud-based applications. Would you hire someone full-time even if you didn’t need these skills on a daily basis? Could you contract with a more experienced cloud architect part-time and pay the same amount as you would pay a junior full-time person?
The same principle applies to other skills you may occasionally need, such as deploying IoT devices, building machine learning models, and creating blockchain-based applications.
In many ways, hyperspecialization is changing the nature of software development, breaking projects into smaller components that require domain experts at different stages. Development projects require all the software engineers, designers, coders, and testers they always need, but they also need skilled experts in embedded systems, data science, machine learning, cybersecurity, and other capabilities to join on a temporary basis.
To fill this gap, most of our outsourcing partners aligned with clients are increasing the depth and breadth of their areas of expertise. They invest time and money to recruit developers with expertise, train their developers on new and emerging technologies, and keep their developers current as technology evolves.
How software architecture becomes super complex
The areas with the most activity these days are predictable. Any technology related to cloud-oriented services has received significant attention, including quality assurance automation, DevOps, robotic process automation and artificial intelligence.
If you’re lucky enough to find the experts you need, their knowledge can help you drive the development of new, innovative solutions that push the boundaries of what’s possible. They can also give your existing team members the opportunity to learn new knowledge by working with experts in emerging technologies. In many cases I’ve seen, the merging of an existing team with a few experts creates exciting synergies that lead to new ideas and better-than-expected results.
The key is to find the right balance between people with specialized skills and those who can work across multiple technologies and integrate disparate systems.
Core back-end financial, e-commerce and operating systems still require the efforts of large teams of developers proficient in technologies ranging from C++ and .NET to Java and Ruby on Rails, but the migration to cloud platforms and the rise of software as a service -The impact of services and emerging technologies creates the need for more complex software requirements.
According to a recent report, software architectures are becoming “hyper-complex, which means they must support many widely distributed software applications, several different types of devices, and new user experiences and interfaces.” Boston Consulting Group Report.
BCG claims that the increasing popularity of artificial intelligence, robotics, AR/VR, the Internet of Things, and 5G networks has created an urgent need for next-generation software architecture. “On the one hand, new technologies develop platforms and tools that will help solve difficult problems cheaper and faster than ever before,” the BCG report states. “On the other hand, they greatly increase the complexity of software architectures, forcing companies to Rethinking how to develop software.”
Focus on multinational teams and outsourcing
Consider the skills needed to support blockchain technology development. Blockchain developers can leverage established languages such as Java, Python, and C++ that have large libraries, long histories of community support, and large installed bases, but new languages are emerging to meet the needs of hyper-targeted specific programming requirements.
For example, Solidity is a top blockchain coding option because of its expertise in developing decentralized applications and its contract orientation. GoLang is a compiled multi-threaded programming language that allows different processes to run simultaneously on multiple blockchain parts, driving its popularity in the non-fungible token market.
As complexity continues to increase and humanity continues to be attracted to the next big thing, companies will have to meet growing demand for hard-to-obtain expertise while maintaining investments in legacy technologies.
While this balancing act won’t be easy, companies with the ability to manage multinational teams and build successful relationships with outsourcing partners will be most likely to succeed.
Excerpted from Synergea: A Blueprint for Building Effective Global Distributed Teams in the New Era of Software Development, by Andy Hilliard. © 2024, Andy Hilliard. all rights reserved. Published by Accelerance, Inc., Redwood City, California.
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