Outsourcing Toolkit

Story: Microsoft warns of 'acute' UK skills shortage

Posted by: Dharmesh Mistry (Monday 10 July 2006, 2:05 PM)

The software industry is going through the same cycle as manufacturing did from the start of the industrial revolution.

The jobs and factories began in the UK, then jobs and factories moved to cheaper locations. When factories became smarter the decision where to locate factories was based less on costs.

Improving productivity of developers requires new tools and approaches. One that improves output from programmers and ideally creates more programmers from people without coding skills.

Hence a return of 4GL's that adopt a Model Driven Architecture is the way forward. We have proven productivity gains of 3:1 (3 traditional coders to one using a smart tool). We have also proven non-developers creating applications.

The real benefit is with productivity you can align people with the business onshore, something that is proving to be an issue with offshore outsource contracts even with local staff feeding offshore developers.

edge IPK have led the "Zero-code" approach, and now this message being adopted by Microsoft and other large software vendors. Real steps are being made towards "End user development".