Scaling at speed: the growing demand for software solutions

The market for advanced software solutions is booming, with the US Bureau of Labour Statistics now projecting that demand for software developers will rise by 21 per cent as of 2028. This is a vast increase, especially compared to the 5 per cent average projected rate of growth for all occupations. 

With customer needs changing frequently, companies are under pressure to scale their technology solutions at speed, and as a recent report from Capgemini highlighted, this presents a significant challenge. Succeeding, however, allows a company to stay at the bleeding edge of market demands while maintaining long-term business value and growth.

By incorporating innovative and Agile processes, companies can create a foundation that enables them to scale quickly and avoid risking being left behind.

Scaling software development 

To successfully scale at speed, companies need to utilise software development processes that enable them to deliver value to their customers quickly and efficiently.

Implementing Agile frameworks, such as Scrum and Kanban, allows software teams to deliver solutions to customers faster and with more predictability, while also enabling companies to react quickly to new information. 

Being Agile doesn’t necessarily deliver “big bang” solutions immediately. Instead, when faced with large and complex issues, Agile teams break these down into smaller parts, solving each piece to form a larger overall solution. Results are evaluated on an ongoing basis to check that all of a company's business mechanisms are correctly responding to market needs. 

Scaling innovation

Innovation has to happen faster to keep up with the current market. However, companies need to differentiate between generating innovation from the front end versus scaling innovation from the back end. 

Scaling from the back end is a separate discipline within the innovation journey, which can be accomplished by creating a designated innovation team and focusing on four key areas: 

1. Setting up specialised roles within the innovation team dedicated to scaling within the business, to ease and accelerate wider business adoption.
2. Cross-training teams across the scaling and generation functions.
3. Placing innovation generators into the scaling function to build awareness of future challenges.
4. Making viability and feasibility analysis integral aspects of the innovation journey.

By focusing on these areas, companies can equip their team with the internal processes required for the most efficient innovation journey possible. 

Scaling teams

Many companies are finding it difficult to scale through traditional recruitment methods and are outsourcing to fill their talent gaps. A recent industry report showed that 63 per cent of IT leaders find it difficult to find and hire strong candidates. Furthermore, 74 per cent of organisations believe that outsourcing can help them improve or adopt better software development practices, such as Agile delivery and quality auditing. 

What a lot of companies don’t realise, however, is that a truly effective outsourcing company becomes a long-term partner, rather than simply a provider. 

A long-term outsourcing partner specialising in digital transformation can provide flexible and value-driven solutions to the problem of scaling teams by:

• Giving companies flexible access to software-development experts on both a long- and short-term basis.
• Providing talent with skills not only in newer technologies (such as blockchain, AI, and 5G) but also in legacy systems (such as Ruby and PHP).
• Future-proofing a business by filling talent gaps with technology experts that in-house team members can learn from.

The bottom line

Scaling quickly is paramount if companies don’t want to get left behind and is critical to developing and sustaining a competitive advantage in the market. To successfully scale at speed, companies need to utilise software development processes that allow them to deliver value to their customers as fast and efficiently as possible. 

It is beneficial for companies to scale from the back end and create a designated innovation team. Outsourcing not only helps companies scale quickly but also helps them improve their software-development practices. An effective outsourcing company becomes more than simply a provider and instead acts as a long-term partner.

Alex Laycy, solution architect at Amdaris