Here’s how CTOs can bridge the GAP to Build superior software & data teams

If you are a CTO, head of engineering, or in any way involved with managing your organization’s technology stack and the people who run it, you will have noticed the headwinds currently facing you.

The reality right now is tough economic conditions: hiring freezes (with full-time equivalents, FTEs, on hold), slashed budgets and, in some unfortunate cases, layoffs. But while it is difficult for an individual organization to predict any great economic or internal shifts, the wheels of your company must continue to turn. Strategic imperatives such as growing revenues, maximizing ROI and accelerating digital transformation require continual iteration. Customer demand and buyer behavior continue to accelerate, as well as competitor pressure.

If you’re not getting better, you’re getting worse

Under such conditions, it is tempting to sit back and wait it out. But there is a cost to not moving. There is a reason why ‘keeping the lights on’ is a pejorative term in product delivery. Even with efficient processes and solid ROI, if you’re standing still, you’re actually going backwards. Your business goals require action.

Why? Because technology, and models of working, keep evolving. Cloud is now the lifeblood that runs through most technology enterprises. Familiarity with your cloud provider of choice and the languages that underpin them — from .NET and Java to Python and Ruby— are non-negotiable. Alongside this greater compute power, data and analytics practices, with AI, predictive modeling and machine learning at the forefront, continue to evolve. If you are not on top of this, rest assured that your competitors will be.

The need for high-quality software delivery at speed and at scale remains. But even without the current economic headwinds, the hiring process can be cumbersome. Look up best practices on hiring software engineers, and the advice for employers is frequently the same: articulate your stack, technological roadmap and company values clearly; value soft and hard skills; and conduct high-quality technical interviews. Yet technical interviews often do not correlate with the day-to-day work of the team. And this is not easy to reconcile.

Bridge the GAP through a nearshoring partnership

Moreover, even projects that appear simple on the surface often have a level of complexity to them underneath. This can range from extending and adding new features to enterprise applications, to creating, updating and extending data pipelines. If this sounds in any way familiar, you may be stuck between a rock and a hard place. But here’s how you can help solve the problem.

If your organization has previously viewed outsourcing as a risk due to fears of relinquishing control or inadequate quality, things have moved on. And nearshoring has additional benefits, such as ease of access -and no bleary- eyed project meetings if you’re in the same time zone. With the right nearshore partner, you can now think of it as a software engineering problem-solver. Got a great project idea but don’t have enough expertise to do it justice? Nearshoring can help. Need assistance with a software application challenge or faster time-to-market? The possibilities are unlimited.

However, the clearest benefit of such a model is with regard to its scope, whether it is a small-scale project or large-scale delivery. If you want to hire a single engineer for a particular project, then traditional staff augmentation may work. But what about the project after that? Would that engineer be the correct fit?

Increasingly, the answer is to build nearshore teams. This model not only gives peace of mind and a sense of continuity, but also eases the burden of team management, which include common headaches ranging from misalignment with company goals and processes, to communication issues and other conflicts. Being a manager is hard; it’s a resource sink, both in time and emotional energy. Letting an expert manage the team frees you up for other important tasks.

Choose a strategic technology solutions partner

To choose the right partner for nearshore development, you need to find one to help build teams and take projects from ideation to implementation — on time and within your budget. They need to understand your software requirements and have a proven track record.

But this is a two-way street. Remember the importance of articulating your technological roadmap and company values? Being confident in who you are, what you do, and how and why you do it means you have a strong cultural fit. The partner tasked with building engineering teams, and the engineers themselves, needs to also understand your working environment. Culture, productivity and retention go hand in hand — and the best partners know it.

So if you’re looking for a strategic technology solutions partner, Growth Acceleration Partners (GAP) checks all the boxes. GAP applies a unique, team-based approach that delivers superior product outcomes via expertise in cloud-native, SaaS and mobile applications, and can provide full-cycle software development to both technically architect and implement a solution.

With its Software and Data Engineering Delivery Services offering, GAP builds scalable teams by employing talent across all technology and digital transformation functions, including:

• Data and analytics
• Cloud applications
• UI/UX design
• QA automation
• Mobile applications
• Dev ops

Clients benefit from GAP’s unique project management approach called 2NABOX (describing two leaders working “in a box”), where two specialized resources in the Americas operate in tandem and are fully accountable toward a single objective. The first resource is a LatAm-based delivery manager overseeing the engineering process, resource portfolio management and metrics reporting. Meanwhile, their U.S. counterpart is a client executive with responsibility toward contract administration, budgetary planning and technology portfolio management, combined with a deep understanding of a client’s overall business objectives.

That understanding is important — and often overlooked. GAP’s Transformation Advisory Services include technology consulting, assessments and advisory services to modernize your business, from architectural consulting to public cloud advisory. Delivery can be a final step in this end-to-end process, which begins with understanding the work required, designing the roadmap, and advising the best path.

The decision is always yours. But if you need a true technology partner, it’s worth getting one who not only tells it to you straight and tells you what to do, but also puts it all together for you.

To find out more, please visit WeAreGAP.com