Skills Shortage in South African Software Sector
The South African Broadcasting Corporation tells us of an interesting study compiled by ITWeb in association with Software Futures. The results of the Software Skills 2004 Survey, conducted on over 700 ITWeb readers, were released yesterday at a business briefing held in Johannesburg.
The study revealed that "a significant number of companies are ignoring the need to address a shortage of skills in the software sector in SA."
Respondents indicated that shortages exist in terms of business analysis skills (23%), project management (14%), process management (10%) and team leadership (10%). A further 14% indicated their companies have skills gaps, but did not identify which competencies these covered.
In reaction to a query as to what their companies were doing to address skills gaps, 23% of respondents said "nothing".
Releasing the results, Ranka Jovanovic, ITWeb editorial director said it was safe to assume that the 13% of respondents that did not specify what their companies were doing to address this problem, worked for employers that had not yet implemented any initiatives to address shortages.
On a more positive note, 22% of respondents said their companies were sponsoring training and development programmes, and a further 14% said skills analyses were being done at their workplaces. Some 15% indicated their companies were recruiting in an attempt to solve the problem.
Shane Radford, IBM's Business Consulting Services managing consultant, spoke at the event. He acknowledged that over 90% of organizations said professional skills were "critical" to their strategies.
Radford's data came from a study conducted by Forrester research earlier in the year. He also added that "strategically-oriented respondents rated skills development as critical to business strategies more often than IT-oriented respondents."
He noted, however, that over 30% of the organisations covered by this survey did not have a dedicated skills development programme, while 45% had no related strategy in place.
South Africa is still being explored as an outsourcing destination, though many companies have seen the value of its Application Support and Development (AS&D) providers. Accenture reports:
South Africa has made significant strides in terms of economic and political stability, as evidenced by better credit and investment ratings from the global business community. As one of the world’s newest and most progressive democracies, South Africa also satisfies the requirements of reliability and sustainability. Specifically, South Africa boasts first world IT and telecommunications infrastructures. Its legislative environment affords the protection needed to ensure that corporate assets are safe while being flexible enough to accommodate business needs.
Recently, IBM also stated it prefers South Africa as a "back-up" outsourcing destination, an alternative to India.
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