| | | Software Industry: solutions for the silent productivity crisis |
| | (08/06/2009-14:52) |
| Diego Falagian, GeneXus’ representative at DMR Spain, published in the weekly edition of “Computing” the following article, where he points out the need for selecting tools to allow work automation and comments the GeneXus influence on this. |
The software industry cannot escape the current global crisis where uncertainty and concern are also present, and it is common for companies to become paralyzed. However, the IT sector is still undergoing a previous hardship: a significant productivity problem. Is there, then, any solution for all of this? The answer is yes. The idea is to act and to change the way in which we do things. This crisis can be seen as a multiple-sided figure that implies varied role players from the sector to a lesser or greater extent. On one hand are the financial problems and the negative previsions for growth that have hindered investments by the Spanish SME in technology, despite the fact that the State has opened lines of credit for that purpose. And this, to a great extent, is due to the great ignorance, among entrepreneurs, about how new technologies may improve the internal processes, optimize timing and resources, and increase operations. In short: make companies more productive.
On the other hand, the situation of employment in IT continues to be worrisome. Universities are still suffering meager levels of registrations in computer-science careers due to the lack of interest shown by young people in relation to these fields of work. The index of graduates per year is not enough to cover the great demand for employees in the sector. This has, in the end, a negative impact on business.
The scarce manpower available, along with the cost of finding a sufficiently experienced professional, drives companies to resort to outsourcing in order to lower costs of hiring qualified personnel and cover the positions available. Apart from a great effort for companies, this implies negative consequences in the local employment market.
Loss of quality
The lack of professionals, added to the great advances in technology, also implies deterioration of the quality of software. Applications are increasingly more simple and user-friendly, but to programmers this implies having to program in more complex environments, for different platforms and programming languages. By way of example: a report by Adecco indicates that Java programmers will be the ones subject to the greatest demand in 2009; those in .Net will also benefit from a great demand. But are these employment offers real? It so happens, that quite too often the requisites and expertise required for the position are the reason for blocking opportunities. Due to a mere issue of age, those who are recent graduates often find it impossible to apply for those posts for they lack the expertise and certificates required.
The speedy advance of technology also affects the most experienced programmers and analysts. Do they have the time necessary for learning every new technology that is launched in the market? Maybe they do, but when they finally master that technology, yet another one, more powerful and complex, comes out, and this cycle goes on and on. This makes the knowledge of the business something secondary, in spite of the fact that it is the most significant asset in the case of IT professionals.
In the presence of these complications that undermine the IT industry, it is probably convenient to change the focus for detecting possible solutions. In this sense, we can wonder if women have the opportunity to become part of the software development world… Job positions available do not differentiate sexes, but women do have to be increasingly favored, as well as young people and independent workers who must be considered and included with greater opportunities within the software industry. More solutions must be available. Why not train young people currently unemployed to boost software development? The software industry in Spain needs to be re-activated, and young people, women and those who are unemployed must be granted opportunities. But what is the right solution here? The first step is to realize that technology is in itself an ally to undertake the problem to go on to the next stage. The following step is to reconsider the way in which we do things. If we insist on this path, the complex way, we will necessarily lose productivity. In times of crisis the strategy is to do more, with less.
So the key is to become more productive and to choose working tools to allow the automation of processes in software development; something that will enable the development of more applications in a shorter period of time and also achieving better levels of quality.
It is necessary for all of us to leave our concern for being permanently updated technology-wise and to focus on the business. GeneXus is all this, a tool on which we trust.
| Design with GeneXus | | GeneXus is a tool for designing and developing multi-platform, mission-critical applications. The main idea in this tool is to automate everything that may be automated. So the purpose is to grant numerous advantages in the creation of applications: development in record-time, automatic maintenance, automatic generation of million of code lines without runtime cost, use of legacy systems, a greater integration of the work team, Business Intelligence, Reporting and Web Services functionalities, as well as the generation of multiple platforms and architectures. |
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