We've got the festive spirit here at IT Professional Services!

Is the UK economy suffering with the same problem as The Premier League?

Is the UK economy suffering with the same problem as 

The Premier League?

Your Project Manager is looking at you expectantly and searching for your answer in your eyes and body language.

She has just presented you with a business case scenario for developing and testing a new application which will support the back office processes for your company HR and Payroll systems.

She has suggested two different routes to you which offer different levels of risk and cost over the next 5 months.

Option 1 is to hire a team of 4 IT Contractors with at least 4 years of industry experience and 1 senior Project Coordinator/QA Manager.

Option 2 is to hire a team of 4 junior professionals with additional training and support provided by a large FTSE100 company.

The cost of Option 1, the experienced IT contractors is around £450 per day each and the senior Project Coordinator is £600 per day – So over 5 months this will likely cost a grand total of approximately £105,000 to deliver on a time and materials basis.

Option 2 looks a lot cheaper – With the 4 Junior Professionals coming in at only £250 per day. Therefore representing a total cost of £25,000 on a T&M basis!

So what’s the Problem? – It’s a no brainer isn’t it? – You go for the cheaper option and save yourself a massive £80,000....................???

Now wait a minute, before you launch yourself into discussions about your well earned Christmas bonus there is an obvious issue here.

Take The Premier League for instance.

When Chelsea FC look to buy a new player they have the simple choice – Do they pay 50 million pounds for an already experienced and proven Brazilian wonder kid who will be an instant success OR do we pay only 4.5 million to Huddersfield Town for their up and coming prodigy, Jimmy Smith who could with some investment and development go on to be as good as the Brazilian wonder kid?

Unfortunately for young Jimmy Smith the decision far too often swings in favour of the already proven and experienced wonder kid as the business commercial teams choose not to take on any risk involved in their development and training and opt for perceived result of instant success.

So returning to the original scenario, you can see an almost identical scenario in front of you.

Do you pay the money and buy in the experienced and supposedly less risky team? OR do you opt for a bit more risk but invest in youth and see how it pans out on this project?

How will you sell this idea to your CEO?

It appears to be a sad truth in life that very much like electricity, humans will normally opt for the easiest and fastest route to reach their destination.

Many argue that for the last 30 years the companies and other organisations of the UK have simply decided to stop investing in good quality training and development and opted for the quick fix alternative of paying more for already proven talent or off shoring work to Eastern Europe or further afield.

This has contributed to the ever increasing skills gap and talent glut as a whole generation appears to have been ignored or at the very least left with undeveloped skills sets.

However these same organisations are now saying that they cannot find the required talent in the UK marketplace or coming out of our Universities.

This seems to have reached a true Catch-22 situation now which will require some revolutionary action to be taken by all those involved in Business.

There need to be more organisations and Premier League football teams for that matter who are willing to price in and accept the risk and potential return into their business planning and to look at their business development over a much longer term view.  Only this way is there a realistic future for both business models and employees of this country.

Watch This Video! - Capita's Novus Model.

WATCH THIS! 

The New Video just released which highlights what the Capita Novus Model is and how it can bring some of the best young UK Talent into your business!

http://vimeo.com/109693722

The Great City Talent Drain

Are the bright city lights draining the IT talent from your company?

If you are a company not based in one of the UK’s major cities, then this article just might resonate with you.

There are black holes appearing in this country and they seem to be relentlessly sucking in all the skilled young people who live in the towns and villages outside of major cities. Not unlike the pied piper of Hamelin, the youth are being drawn away with an almost trance-like effect on them and the promise of fame and fortune under the big city lights!

Unfortunately for you this means that if you want to bring new young blood into your company or if you hope to retain staff you have invested a lot of time and money in, then your job is getting harder and harder to achieve.

Why is this happening? What are the main factors at play here and what solutions do you have available to help?

Well let’s start with salary

A young software developer or tester living on the south coast has a choice. They could join a local company and accept a salary in the range of 20k-25k per annum. In London, which is only 90 minutes away, the same role can easily pay 25k-35k per annum! The same is true for other major cities around the UK too, and smaller companies can find it hard to compete.

Then there’s location

The fast paced and buzzing atmosphere of big cities can be a big draw to workers, especially those who are fresh out of university. The precincts of smaller, more rural towns cannot compete, and so are losing lots of talent to the big cities.

Peer groups

Younger people have most likely seen a lot of their friends move to cities in the last few years and are understandably keen to live closer to their peers. Again this is another powerful pull in the wrong direction in the tug-of-war for talent.

Stability and retention of staff

Most companies would like to bring good quality staff into their teams and have a guarantee of retaining them and their skills in house for a good length of time (usually at least 18 months to deliver return on investment). This can be very challenging however, and companies can often face the situation of a resource leaving their company midway through a project as they have received a more lucrative job offer elsewhere!

How are companies combating these problems?

By way of example, in the technology sector we are seeing an increasing number of organisations using IT contractors to keep projects on track and make sure that they don’t lose out on opportunities. This can be a good option for companies, but it also comes with its problems.

Cost is certainly one of the biggest issues with using contractors for longer periods of time. Daily charge rates can easily be upwards of £450 per day in a lot of cases and this can have a big impact on overall project expenditure.

Contractors can also be a wonderful source of knowledge and experience as well as a new face around the office. However, once the project ends and they leave to go elsewhere, you lose both their skills and office personality in one go.

So what’s the alternative?

This blog may seem like it is written by a person with a glass half empty view on life, however let me counter this thought with a positive solution to the problems I have highlighted above.

There is now a concerted effort from within government and from the current leaders of each industry sector to find new and innovative ways of fighting back against the great city talent drain. One current success story has been an innovative resourcing model run by Capita, called The Novus Programme.

The concept of this programme is to offer IT, Science, and Business graduates who have already finished their Degree course additional commercial awareness training and soft skills development through a unique programme of learning. This programme is designed to train graduates in the employability skills which the modern employer requires so urgently. This includes soft skills, communication skills and professional presentation skills alongside technical training in one of our training streams.

As a FTSE 100 organisation, Capita is able to offer a real world training environment where the graduates learn to become young IT professionals within a true project driven environment.

Graduates commit themselves to Capita for up to two years in return for Capita’s investment in their training. We then place these young professionals with our clients for anything from three months to full two year engagements.

This model has shown itself to be a real win-win solution for both graduates and employers, especially those based outside of major UK cities:

The young Novus professionals will not leave mid-project or disappear to the big smoke as they are contractually committed to Capita

The Novus daily charge rate is a lot lower than contractor rates, making Novus very cost effective

You regain time as Capita takes care of the HR and direct management of your Novus

Capita pays graduates a competitive salary once they are placed with a client company, helping combat the big salary draw of major cities

After their two year commitment to Capita, you have the option to take your Novus on permanently, hence retaining their skills and knowledge in-house

There is little doubt that the day has arrived for organisations to start tackling the big city talent drain head on. However the future is actually looking very bright for those who are willing to look seriously at some of the latest and innovative solutions available to them.

Find out all about us!

We're a big fan of digital engagement - view our ITPS showreel

The skills gap debate

On Thursday 11th September, we teamed up with Civil Service World (CSW) and held a breakfast briefing at a venue in Westminster. The aim of the briefing was to discuss the findings of our recent research into the civil service’s IT skills gap. The event was chaired by Matt Ross, Editor of CSW, and the discussion included the survey findings, and how the civil service can realise the government’s ambitions for departmental efficiency and digital services. The survey results can be viewed here: 
https://www.capita-itps.co.uk/media/105528/Dods-survey-report-Novus-Programme.pdf

Going mobile....

How many chances will your organisation have to engage and persuade your customers to use your mobile application? It’s essential that you protect brand value through high-quality deliverables in the mobile applications space:  http://ow.ly/B8CKD 

Capita achieves in innovation

Did you know that Capita have been ranked as one of the top 100 most innovative companies by Forbes, the American business magazine? We were only one of four UK companies included in the list: http://lnkd.in/dpvv5eY

Performance testing - reducing risk

There are plenty of high profile stories demonstrating the importance of performance testing in reducing the likelihood of loss of reputation or revenue. In May 2012, during the Facebook IPO, the NASDAQ trading system folded under the volume of trading orders. This resulted in NASDAQ having to pay discomfited users $63 million in compensation and fines of $10 million to the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The cost of this kind of performance failure can be measured, not just in lost sales or financial penalties, but also in damage to reputation. As a result, almost all forward thinking organisations now realise the importance of performance testing and it is becoming a well-established part of a mature release process.
Read our white paper on performance testing to find out more:
https://www.capita-itps.co.uk/media/103891/White-paper-PERFORMANCE-TESTING.pdf

Capita are the biggest public sector software and IT services supplier

Capita has overtaken HP as the biggest supplier of IT services and software to the UK public sector after an 11% increase in sales in 2013 compared to 2012. http://ow.ly/A6f7G 

Going Agile - is it always the right answer?

Although the topic has been around for some time, Agile is still a relatively new way of working for many organisations.  Its adoption doesn't happen overnight and as a methodology it comes with its own set of challenges.   

We recently held a round table discussion which focused on the adoption of Agile and whether it is always the answer. Key contacts attended from a mixture of organisations and industries to take part in a lively conversation.

The audience had differing levels of experience in the use of agile with some  organisations  practicing agile across a number of projects for longer than a 12-month period with varying degrees of success, whilst others were just about to dip their toes in the water. The general feeling among our invited guests however, was that Agile:

• is a strong way forwards for companies that want to deliver services to the market.
• facilitates flexibility and allows you to adapt quickly to change.
• is not a simple answer and requires more structure in terms of process and prioritisation.                            

So how do we adopt Agile? 

However it became apparent that adopting Agile isn’t as simple as running a few daily scrums. An organisation needs to change the way it operates.

It was identified that to introduce Agile into the organisation successfully there also needs to be a change in the culture with a change in mindset from rigid and liner work practices to collaborative and iterative processes. A number of organisations highlighted that it can be hard for teams to let go of past working habits and shift to self organising teams. The emphasis is now on stakeholder management rather than hands on with Prince2.

Becoming Agile also requires the right skill set and there was an emphasis on the importance of both skill acquisition and internal staff retention.  The main challenges are acquiring talented individuals and strong agile project managers. Targeted recruitment from small technology companies and retraining existing employees are strategies that some organisations are using.

We're not just about software testing, we offer a range of innovative end-to-end solutions that will help deliver your business programmes. Read more about us and what we do! http://www.capita-itps.co.uk/what-we-do/

If you're interested in the topic of Agile and its benefits, why not join our discussion forum on Linked In?
Capita IT Professional Services Agile discussion group?

We held an Agile round table event on Thursday 6th March, to discuss the benefits and challenges of using Agile in the workplace.  Find out more about our Agile services here: http://www.capita-itps.co.uk/our-solutions/agile-services/

Fallen out of love with your job? If you're looking for a role in SAP project management then contact spencer.shalka@capita.co,uk   We;re hiring for a senior SAP project manager with min 7 years delivery experience on financial applications. Must be MSP, Prince II Practitioner (or higher) and/or Agile. Contact Spencer for further details and to apply.

We now have a new website! Take a look at www.capita-itps.co.uk

Automation, although can be challenging to implement, can deliver real business benefits. These include increased efficiency and reduced cost. Our services offers Automation as a managed service or by optimizing deployment of existing Automation tools: http://bit.ly/1bjkqaJ

There can be no doubt that an Agile approach to software development can deliver substantial benefits to the business. However, while Agile makes big promises, it also presents significant challenges across organisations and is as prone to failure as any other methodology.

Our whitepaper, ‘Agile can deliver - when you know where you’re going’, is a summary of what we’ve learned over years of delivering and rescuing Agile projects. We believe that every project requires a different balance of methods and resources, which is why we create a tailored approach for every client.

http://bit.ly/1lHJTSz

Happy new year!

Happy new year! 2013 was a busy year, lots of changes and events happening.  2014 looks to be even more hectic, we've a new website launching this month, plus a White Paper on Automation being published....