How to support employees’ development in tech and IT industries?

An organization open to entry-level employees creates internal possibilities of efficient personnel policy planning and building an environment that facilitates and accelerates forming committed teams, not only in the IT industry. We observed this with our customer, one of the biggest companies in the pharmaceutical industry. As a part of the cooperation in the team leasing model, our customer employed a junior and senior. Tandem, formed by Krzysztof Pietrzak (at first, in the project as a PMO, after promotion – a Scrum Master) and Małgorzata Pujszo (Delivery Manager), joined a multicultural project team consisting of 130 people. The project team’s goal was to create a data warehouse to aggregate information from many sources, manage them centrally, as well as process data depending on the needs. 

The project, that was both technically and logistically demanding, constituted one of the key elements of the proper functioning of the customer’s business processes. The project’s success is determined mainly by effective team communication. Considering its size, naturally, there were problems in the area of information flow and new employee onboarding. Krzysztof, who joined the team as a junior, proved irreplaceable as he collected and organized knowledge and project documentation. He designed a customized, engaging, and mostly Agile onboarding process for the new IT specialists joining the team. This improvement sped up the process of the induction process of new team members. Also, the level of care for new employees has increased from the first days of their work in the project.

Employing our tandem (Junior Scrum Master and Senior Delivery Manager) showed that junior adaptation to new responsibilities is less time-consuming and more efficient if they have particular tasks assigned. The senior prepares a work schedule continuously, delegating tasks to a Scrum junior, and thanks to that, the information flow is immediate. It enables smooth and effective cooperation and timely execution of both tasks.

Is junior IT specialist expensive and unprofitable for an organization?

In our tandems, seniors take care of juniors, and they are responsible for their effective onboarding and delivering tasks within the agreed schedule. Relieving a customer’s organization from the onboarding process of an entry-level employee and transferring such a task to the senior from Craftware allowed customers to focus on other processes, essential for the proper implementation of the project. Additionally, reassigning a specific area (that hasn’t been well taken care of before due to the large accumulation of various project tasks) to the junior improved the flexibility of the project team operation as well as positively affected their morale and motivation.

For juniors, an organization open to employing them might be a way to gain necessary professional experience and prove themselves in a new position due to reskilling. Openness to juniors is beneficial for their direct employers as well, as it allows monitoring the development of newcomers and their adoption to the organizational culture and already functioning project team.

By supervising a junior, a senior learns efficient planning and task delegation. Seniors develop their soft competencies and shape themselves as managers. Smooth planning and an appropriate division of responsibilities in line with junior’s skills and both junior and senior’s experience helps to avoid overloading a senior. They do not need to focus on tasks below their qualifications. What might be a tedious and routine task for a senior is a new challenge for a junior and a chance to hone their skills. Working as a tandem enables knowledge exchange and allows one to see particular areas from two different perspectives. It’s beneficial for both a project and an organization itself. Thanks to that, it’s possible to maintain a high quality of work and the project team’s commitment.

An organization’s development and challenges associated with the lack of a sufficient number of IT employees with accurate competencies result in the need for searching for new solutions. Companies need employees to achieve their business objectives. The commonly known model of employing seniors to fulfill all responsibilities, even those below their qualifications, results in an environment where they cannot grow. In the long term, it’s demotivating for an experienced employee and, finally, leads to quitting the project or the parent company. Consequently, the company loses valuable know-how and bears the costs of another recruitment and onboarding. That’s why it is worth having a new approach to analyzing a seniority requirement for a position in demand. Nowadays, companies must identify the changes taking place in the labor market. Also, they need to have the flexibility to create an environment where both a senior and junior can develop while taking on interesting duties.

Educating juniors internally in an organization and investing in employee development is the best way to deal with the understaffed IT industry. Companies having the courage to fill this gap with the internal training of IT specialists constitute an example of managing the business in an Agile way.

Attracting with benefits is not enough now. IT specialists don’t look for fruit Tuesdays or free coffee; they are after interesting projects and environments to grow. Contact us and see what benefits you can achieve by employing a Craftware tandem.