Nihilent has partnered with the academic CIO Forum to develop the Chief Information Officer (CIO) Academy programme. Launched at the end of 2009, the aim of the CIO Academy has been to develop mentorships and skills for aspiring young IT graduates as new entrants into the market. The focus has been on skills development, internships and graduate programmes. More recently, the CIO Academy has helped to create job opportunities for interns through experience gained in project work.
The partnership involves expanding the CIO Academy in the market and building capacity for project work using the right level of skills. The focus of the programme is on human capital development in a knowledge economy. The partnership aims to create opportunities and provide experience for new entrants into the IT profession through commercial projects. The CIO Academy and Nihilent will focus on improving capability to deliver on small and large, complex projects.
Nihilent brings a wealth of experience in areas such as software process and CMMI, business process, enterprise transformation and enterprise architecture, as well as expertise across industry sectors and verticals and a diversity of technologies and platforms. The partnership will help the CIO Forum and CIO Academy to scale its skills development programme and initiatives.
The CIO Academy has been involved in research and skills development of information technology (IT) and software programmers in the Western Cape. Traditionally, demand for skills has been driven by corporate IT and companies that have developed their own products, solutions and services. The growth of start-ups in the region, driven largely by design and young creative and innovative entrepreneurs, has increased the demand for software developers. But it has exposed a need for more entrepreneurial and low-cost technical resources. There is an imbalance in that there is a lack of the right skills at the right price.
Temporary work and projects are key to addressing youth unemployment in the Western Cape. Project work helps to grow a business, but often the seemingly low-priority projects that are not undertaken because of budget cuts are the ones that help deliver new products to market and fuel growth. The challenge is to develop the capacity and capability to deliver on small and large software development and IT projects. Companies need to adapt to the changes in labour law and establish sustainable models for resourcing temporary projects while building ongoing support and maintenance. Organisations need to learn to be adaptive and scale up and down.
While offshoring of software development impacts negatively on job creation, there is a need to learn from the India experience and to create partnerships that can help develop the region. The India IT revolution has helped surrounding countries in Asia and South East Asia to establish larger-scale software development capabilities.
The adoption of the Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI) certification, along with Agile software development, has helped to make India an attractive and viable destination for software development. Longer-term, scaling and delivery of software development and IT projects will help build local capacity and attract further work and talent. The partnership between Nihilent and the CIO Academy aims to support the region's aspirations of becoming a global centre for design, innovation and software development.
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