Closing Your Skills Gap and Surging Successfully Takes the Right Partner
In my last blog I outlined how the skills gap negatively impacts product development, particularly in terms of protracted timelines or cost overruns. Now, I want to help you most effectively close this gap.
Specialists are Key
By enlisting the help of specialist providers like Integrated Computer Solutions (ICS) to bridge the skills gap between your own internal expertise and your goal to manufacture and deliver a quality product, you’ll be well-equipped to successfully manage the entire project development lifecycle, for your current project and future endeavors.
The quality and expertise of your partner — with whom you should establish a relationship long before you actually need to enlist their help — is key to the success of your project so choose with care.
When selecting a specialist partner to close your skills gap, look for one that:
- Employs engineers and developers who work on myriad cutting-edge projects relevant to your industry or your chosen technologies
- Possesses deep domain expertise and applicable technical skills important to your business, for instance user experience design or development frameworks like Qt/QML
- Provides expert training in key technologies and one-on-one coaching to help you build new skills and develop talent internally
- Has a solid track record of completing projects on time and within budget
- Offers on-call help desk-like support to get you through thorny issues
- Leverages a deep well of industry best practices
Obstacles are Inevitable, So You Need the Ability to Surge
Even if you manage to bridge your skills gap, any extended development project will encounter obstacles, such as changing priorities due to market shifts or evolving product requirements. The most resilient development teams have the ability to surge — to bring to bear key resources for an unanticipated, short-term, all-out push to get past an unforeseen development obstacle.
The success of your project often hinges on how well you surge.
Surges are labor and time intensive, taxing your team well beyond what is expected during the normal product development process. In my experience, even the most well-staffed companies lack the resources in house to effectively navigate a surge.
Every project faces a few bumps in the road, so surges are a given. Winning at product development demands both closing your skills gap and retaining the right team at the right time to manage these inevitable surges.
Do you have the right team?