Closing the gap between software engineering education and industrial needs

According to different reports, many recent software engineering graduates often face difficulties when beginning their professional careers, due to misalignment of the skills learnt in their university education with what is needed in industry. To address that need, many studies have been conducted to align software engineering education with industry needs. To synthesize that body of knowledge, we present in this paper a systematic literature review (SLR) which summarizes the findings of 33 studies in this area. By doing a meta-analysis of all those studies and using data from 12 countries and over 4,000 data points, this study will enable educators and hiring managers to adapt their education / hiring efforts to best prepare the software engineering workforce

Soft Skills and Software Development: A Reflection from the Software Industry

Psychological theories assert that not everybody is fit for every task, as people have different personality traits and abilities. Often, personality traits are expressed in people’s soft skills. That is, the way people perceive, plan and execute any assigned task is influenced by their set of soft skills. Most of the studies carried out on the human factor in IS concentrate primarily on personality types. Soft skills have been given comparatively little attention by researchers. We review the literature relating to soft skills and the software engineering and information systems domain before describing a study based on 650 job advertisements posted on well-known recruitment sites from a range of geographical locations including, North America, Europe, Asia and Australia. The study makes use of nine defined soft skills to assess the level of demand for each of these skills related to individual job roles within the software industry. This work reports some of the vital statistics from industry about the requirements of soft skills in various roles of software development phases. The work also highlights the variation in the types of skills required for each of the roles. We found that currently although the software industry is paying attention to soft skills up to some extent while hiring but there is a need to further acknowledge the role of these skills in software development. The objective of this paper is to analyze the software industry’s soft skills requirements for various software development positions, such as system analyst, designer, programmer, and tester. We pose two research questions, namely, (1) What soft skills are appropriate to different software development lifecycle roles, and (2) Up to what extend does the software industry consider soft skills when hiring an employee. The study suggests that there is a further need of acknowledgment of the significance of soft skills from employers in software industry

Software Quality in Academic Curriculum: A Case Study in Turkey

A variety of courses are taught in the undergraduate programs of computer science, computer engineering, software engineering and information system engineering. The preferred choices of the software industry are for hiring engineers for their companies from these disciplines, related to this fact, the emphasis on quality in software given to the associated departments' students, hence on quality objectives in software process, are studied. With this aim, a survey of the curricula of these branches in the top ten Turkish universities is undertaken. Our observations show software quality is not considered commonly as a core course except in software engineering, while the computer engineering departments provide the majority of the graduates to the industry. The results may be interpreted as suggesting that a reason for loose monitoring of standards in the software industry may be associated with this observation because graduates with transcripts on quality are few in number

Software co-development between supplier and buyer - benefits, risk and enablers

Digitalization changes many industries since manufacturers are increasing the automation level in their products. Novel business needs require developed softwares, and that often leads companies to seek external skills for software development either by hiring more software engineers or by purchasing tailored softwares from software companies. However, prices in the software industry can be high, and hiring new software engineers or purchasing tailored softwares may become expensive. Co-developing software with other companies could be a convenient method for sharing the costs and risk in software development. As a result of this literature review study, different co-development models - such as contractual alliances and joint ventures - are proposed as potential governance models for software co-development. In addition, an interview template for evaluating other companies’ willingness for inter-organizational software development was developed.Articles published in IIS are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Issues in Information Systems is an open-access journal. Users have the right to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full text of articles in this journal, and to use them for any other lawful purpose.fi=vertaisarvioitu|en=peerReviewed

Exploring leadership development in Native American business organizations within the tourism industry

With the tourism business consistently evolving and changing, Native American tribal businesses and leaders face challenges as they continue to grow and thrive in the industry. Although all businesses in the tourism industry face challenges and have commonalities, certain challenges are specific to Native American businesses. Often located in rural areas, hiring tribal members when available, and with limited talent pools, these Native American businesses are running complex software and hardware systems that require very specific and complex technical expertise. From recruiting to hiring, onboarding to training seasoned executives, specific leadership and technical needs must be met, regardless of limitations. Senior managers from Native American tribal businesses explore what they have learned, what they have seen, and what they are doing to get the right people in their organizations. Once they hire the right employees, training, mentoring, feedback, and reporting can be used to empower them and their award-winning teams to execute macro level system implementations throughout their organizations

HOW LATVIAN DEVELOPERS LEARN NEW TECHNOLOGIES. A CONCLUSIVE REVIEW AND ANALYSIS OF SURVEY DATA

The goal of research is to give an overview of the skills, tools and informal learning methods used by Latvian software developers and IT students to learn new technologies and compare results with similar international survey conducted by “Stack Overflow”. Furthermore, another author’s survey campaign aimed at IT industry employers to study their opinion about current workforce situation in Latvia’s IT industry’s labour market, and main criteria that are important for hiring new job applicants. This insight research is based on survey, where 8 employers and 52 software developers and students responded on the question

Inter-organizational collaboration in software product development

Digitalization changes many industries since manufacturers are increasing the automation level in their products. Novel business needs require developed softwares, and that often leads companies to use external skills in software development either by hiring more software engineers or by purchasing tailored softwares from software companies. However, prices in the software industry can be high, and hiring new software engineers or purchasing tailored softwares may not be the most cost-effective method to get softwares into products. Co-developing softwares with other companies could be a potential method for sharing the costs and benefits of the product development processes. The objective of this thesis was to investigate different companies’ interests towards deep collaboration models, such as contractual alliances and joint ventures, in software development. Other objective was to examine what benefits and risks these collaboration models include, as well as which are the enablers and barriers for such collaboration. Research data was gathered by interviews with product development managers and directors as well as with technology managers and directors of different companies. Results showed that software co-development in a contractual alliance aroused moderate interest, whereas forming a joint venture for software co-development aroused less interest among the interviewees. Main benefits that interviewees saw in a deep collaboration in product development were the possibility to increase the speed and creativity in the processes while sharing the costs and risks of the development work. The main risks in deep collaboration were the uncertainty in collaboration costs, risk of getting too dependent of the partner and risk of getting unfair share of the jointly created value. Trust, open knowledge sharing and sufficient contracting skills were seen as the main enablers for deep collaboration, whereas limited time and complex contracting were the main barriers for deep inter-organizational collaboration

Electronic Portfolios as Job Search Tools: Perspectives from Students, Career Counselors, and Human Resource Professionals

Electronic portfolios have traditionally been used by artists as a means of showcasing and organizing projects and accomplishments. Within academia, colleges and universities have implemented electronic portfolios as a way for students to showcase and share their papers, projects, and course work. Universities and colleges typically license e-portfolio software and distribute the platform to students. The eFolioMinnesota software is free for all students and residents in the state through the Minnesota State Colleges and Universities System (MnSCU). Unfortunately, little has been researched about the use of e-portfolios in career development or employee recruiting. Never before have e-portfolios integrated with workforce development efforts nor aided in business and industry development. What is the impact of electronic portfolios in hiring practices? Through an anonymous survey, 66.7 percent of human resource representatives and career counselors admitted to seeking candidate information online. While 70.7 percent said they view online resumes, only 29.3 percent are viewing electronic portfolios. On a scale of one to ten, the average rating for value in a resume was 6.34 while it was only 4.66 for electronic portfolios and 44.7 percent of respondents found little to no value at all in electronic portfolios. The biggest weakness of using electronic portfolios in the hiring process was time, or rather a lack of time. Some considered it an extra step in the review process and questioned if using that extra time was worth it. If we want students and job seekers to develop electronic portfolios as job search tools, employers will also need education and training on the best practices for incorporating this new tool into their screening and hiring process