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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.