At our recent event at The Shard, London, Amdaris’ co-CEO Vlad Nanu, along with Dawood Khan (Sales Director) and Glyn Blaize (COO) spent an evening leading discussions with executives from various sectors. Kevin Bulmer (Chief Technology & Transformation Officer) from our client Robert Walters Group also attended as the keynote speaker. The main question that we explored was: “How do software development issues impact a business’s core KPIs?”
It was quickly established that, as tech and business results are more intertwined than ever, software development issues can hugely impact businesses. Quality development creates business value that flows through to KPIs like shareholder value and NPS. We had three tables at the event, each one of which considered one pain point in software development and its impact. We explore these in this blog.
The impact of the current hiring landscape on project delivery
The tech talent shortage is hard to miss and it can be increasingly difficult to hire and retain the skills you need in-house, especially here in the UK. Outsourcers can be a great solution. They do the hard work of recruiting and retaining world-class tech talent for you, so you can access the skills you need, as and when you need them. Some outsourcers can build your core team within days (sometimes 24 hours), rather than hiring over many weeks or months.
Many businesses have experimented with low-priced outsourcing in Asia. This saves cash in the short term, however, in the long run, many have experienced frustrations as they’ve struggled with language/ cultural barriers and with in-demand developers being unreliable. Churn is also a major problem in some centres in India right now. This has a significant impact and opens risk on software development velocity. Nearshore teams offer fewer language/ cultural barriers and, provided these outsourcers have tried-and-tested processes in place to ensure effective onboarding and knowledge transfer, they can get projects up and running fast.
The impact of balancing delivery velocity and quality
It’s easy to assume that speed is the most crucial element of software development. While it is of course important to maintain a high velocity in order to realise your ROI as quickly as possible, if you value efficiency above all else then this can negatively impact the value of your product or software.
There is always going to be a trade-off between quality and speed to market. However, it’s important not to put efficiency above all else. A lack of quality in code can significantly impact business metrics and this all stems from losing sight of the overall KPIs you are trying to influence.
Poor quality will cost you in the future, so it’s a false economy. Anywhere that you are not focused on value erodes the relationship between IT, the business and its customers; small fissures open and no one realises the problems until it is too late. Businesses need to balance value and speed in software development to maximise their ROIs and achieve their ambitions.
The impact of increased demand
Sometimes you need to increase the velocity of software development projects to meet your business needs, but how do you recruit to meet this demand? Again, this can be very difficult to do in-house, so outsourcing is a great solution. Many outsourcers will have the capacity to scale up and down your team, as and when you need.
It’s important to create a business case for investment in software development projects and to align this with your wider business goals so that you can make sure your code ultimately drives value within your business.
Thanks to all who came along to our Shard event. We look forward to doing more of these in-person discussions in the future.
If you’d like to talk about how our nearshore software development teams can help you take your business to the next level, then get in touch.