SA 'north-shores' software work

By Leon Engelbrecht, ITWeb senior writer

Johannesburg, 26 Mar 2008

SA's skills shortage is forcing it to export software development work. While much of that is going to destinations like India, an increasing amount is going to Africa, says software development house Indigo Cube.

SA is currently rated as a Gartner "top 30" global software development outsourcing destination. However, its chronic skills shortage means it is often shy of capacity, hence the "north-shoring" of work to Nigeria, Kenya and Uganda.

Indigo Cube principal consultant Jaco Viljoen says those countries are starting to "generate some good skills", much of it the result of training and work experience gained in SA.

While he does not have figures to quantify the trend, he says it is readily discernable.

In addition, a substantial number of his company's crew of graduate developers are from SA's northern neighbours - and he rates them highly. "They're all kids who studied here, they have excellent results, and were still educated under the British A-levels and O-levels system. They are excellent, they fly and it is sad we don't see that quality in our SA graduates," he says.

Team activity

Speaking more broadly about training and software development in SA, Indigo Cube MD Ziaan Hattingh says: "We are still as bad at software development as we were 20, 30 years ago. There are two sets of problems that impede us [as an industry]. One set is related to technology and the other to the way we do software development."

Says Viljoen: "There is an imbedded mindset about how we do software development and, even though modern software development has solutions for this, people still do things the old fashioned way, the way they've always done it... they are just using more dangerous tools. As a result, the mess-ups are bigger."

Adds Hattingh: "We have more efficient tools to do it badly with."

"The problem starts with the way universities teach software development," continues Viljoen. "Software development is a team sport," explains Hattingh. "This is not something we've caught up with yet. We sit with a lot of individualists who all want to do their own thing..."

Another problem, he adds, is the square pegs for round holes syndrome. "The team sport analogy applies here too. We see countless examples where people are miserable in their jobs because they are not suited to the task. This is particularly the case with business analysts, but is just as applicable to project managers.

"In rugby you don't pick the lanky guy for the pack. You would put him on the flank. The same in software development," Hattingh argues. "You must deploy people where their aptitudes will serve them, the project and the company best.

"We don't know how to put teams together and the result is project managers who are project administrators and business analysts who analyse, but cannot add value," Hattingh laments. "The people aspect of software development has been very badly managed. A lot of the problems originate here. People see technology as the answer when the solution is building teams that can work together and putting the right person in the right job."

"There are no quick fixes, we will have to knuckle down as an industry and solve it. It is the type of problem that arises over time as various factors interact with each other. It will take time to sort out," Viljoen adds.

"But at some point people must recognise we must do something about it or the problem will be even worse next year and worse still the next. Last time we took part in the ITWeb salary survey we saw salaries had gone up 25%. How long can we still afford salary inflation like that?"